AVERY CUNNINGHAM

AUTHOR OF THE MAYOR OF MAXWELL STREET

NEW BOOK
RELEASE

"A debut novel everyone will be talking about," Avery Cunningham's epic love story is "a triumph" and "a tale of intrigue, racial tension, and class warfare, set against the glamorous and gritty backdrop of early 20th century Chicago."

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Debut author Avery Cunningham’s gripping, emotional novel is at once an epic love story, a riveting historical drama, and a brilliant exploration of Black society and perseverance when the '20s first began to roar.

-Victoria Christopher Murray, New York Times best-selling author of The Personal Librarian

ABOUT
AVERY CUNNINGHAM

Avery Cunningham is a resident of Memphis, TN, and a 2016 graduate of DePaul University’s Master of Arts Writing & Publishing program. She has over a decade of editorial experience with various literary magazines, small presses, and best-selling authors. Avery grew up surrounded by exceptional African Americans who strived to uplift their communities while also maintaining a tenuous hold on prosperity in a starkly segregated environment. The sensation of being at once within and without is something she has grappled with since childhood and explores thoroughly in her work of historical fiction. When not writing, Avery is adventuring with her Bernese Mountain Dog, Grizzly, and wading waist-deep in research for her next novel. She aspires to tell the stories of complex characters fighting for their right to exist at the fringes of history. THE MAYOR OF MAXWELL STREET is her debut novel.

FROM THE BOOK

The year is 1921, and America is burning. A fire of vice and virtue rages on every shore with Chicago at its beating heart.

Twenty-year-old Nelly Sawyer is the daughter of the alleged “wealthiest Negro in America”; a Kentucky horse breeder whose wealth and prestige catapult his family to the heights of the exclusive, elite Black society. After the unexpected death of her brother—the family presumed heir—Nelly goes from being virtually unknown to a premier debutante overnight. But Nelly has aspirations beyond society's influence and marriage. For the past year, she has worked undercover as an investigative journalist for The Chicago Defender, sharing the achievements and tribulations of everyday Black people living in the shadow of Jim Crow. Now, her latest assignment thrusts her into the den of a dangerous vice lord: the so-called Mayor of Maxwell Street.

is Nelly willing to take for a young man willing to risk it all?

Charming and mysterious, Jay Shorey strives to balance his connection to the Chicago underworld with a desperate yearning for the refinement and protection of high society. Born to a murdered bi-racial couple in rural Alabama, he knows firsthand what it means to be denied a chance at the American Dream. When a tragic turn of fate gave Jay a rare path out, he took it without question. He washed up on Chicago’s storied shores and never looked back, until now. When Nelly and Jay’s paths cross, she recruits him to help expose this Mayor and bring about a lasting change in a corrupted city.

Trapped between the monolith of Jim Crow, the inflexible world of the Black upper class, and the violence of Prohibition-era Chicago, Jay, and Nelly work together and stoke the flames of a love worth fighting for. And yet, as with all things in America, there is a price to be paid. What risk Is Nelly willing to take for a young man willing to risk it all?

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