ISBN: 0-88739-238-5
272 pp.
Size: 6 x 9
Pub Date: 4/2000
Paperback Original
Price: $15.95
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Sansculotte
Stan Chapman
Norm Blanchard buys the bar and restaurant Sansculotte with the hopes of restoring it to its former glory as a jazz mecca. Based on his memories of playing piano there in the sixties, Norm tries to recapture the past-with little success. Faced with the imminent failure of his business, Norm, a recovering alcoholic, is teetering on the edge when he encounters Billie Rutherford, an aspiring jazz singer. Largely because of Billie, the restaurant's fortunes improve, as does Norm's relationship with his teenage son and retired father. But when Dave Bradshaw, a former band-mate of Norm's and now a famous musician, returns to Sanculotte to celebrate the first anniversary of the reopening, Norm's world begins to fall apart, and he is forced to deal with a series of traumatic event that threaten his sobriety.
Review: "A spellbinding novel...When Chapman describes a jam session or a cutting contest, he does so with such unrestrained enthusiasm, conviction and verisimilitude the reader is caught up and transported with the musician in his excitement that verges on ecstasy."
-CarmelPine Cone
"As an avid reader, I must tell you that this book is one of the best I have read in quite a while....It was impossible to put down....I don't think I will ever be able to attend a jazz concert without thinking and wondering about the personal lives of the musicians. Stan Chapman has done a remarkable job of integrating the art of jazz into the fabric of great story telling."
-James L. Doti, President, Chapman University
"Stan Chapman's Sansculotte is a lovely jazz story in which he has played all the right notes for romantics."
-Jim Bellows, former editor, NY Herald Tribune and LA Examiner
Bio: STAN CHAPMAN graduated from Stanford University in 1954. He has been a trustee at Chapman University, named after his grandfather, since 1997. Sansculotte is Chapman's second novel.
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