In the Book Notes series, authors create and discuss a music playlist that relates in some way to their recently published book.
Nell Joslin’s novel Measure of Devotion is an immersive and moving debut.
Kirkus wrote of the book:
“An intense, addictive drama with a hint of light at the end of the tunnel.”
In her own words, here is Nell Joslin’s Book Notes music playlist for her debut novel Measure of Devotion:
Measure of Devotion is set during the American Civil War and told from a woman’s point of view. Susannah does not support slavery and is infuriated when her son Francis joins the Confederate army. Still, when he’s wounded, she undertakes a dangerous journey to rescue him. The book centers around their fractured relationship, the hardship and violence they both endure, and of course, the terrible cost of war. There is also longing, disappointment, frustrated desire and the possibility of a redemptive love.
While writing this book I found it incredibly centering to play a soundtrack of a restored 19th-century train during the railroad journey scenes. Here was percussion, beautiful and repetitive, and I was there on that train with my characters. Soon a deeper search for more of the same led me into Steve Reich’s minimalist percussion pieces—spare, haunting, emotionally resonant. Oh man, listen to “Drumming, Part I,” on the album Sō Drumming. Reich transmits through sound what I have tried to achieve with words.
Imagining my novel with a soundtrack is probably one of the more satisfying things I’ve ever done. It’s pure, delicious fantasy—and surely fantasy is one of the most important levels of existence. Or to paraphrase Ralph Waldo Emerson (a 19th-century Steve Reich equivalent if there ever was one), “a writer’s reach must exceed her grasp, or what the hell is heaven for?”
So here goes.
Elliot Smith, “Waltz #2 (XO)”
This beautiful song is about the singer-songwriter’s fraught relationship with his mother and stepfather, filled with longing and anger, pain and confusion. It is the perfect marinade for the story of a mother’s desire to protect her son, the son’s longing for a remote father, and the father’s futile efforts to be first in his wife’s affections. The ¾ time signature, set off by descending chords, sets up an incredible tension in the opening measures, culminating in the heartbreaking lyric, “I’m never going to know you now, but I’m going to love you anyhow.”
This song comes in after the wrenching argument between Susannah and Francis just before he leaves home, reprised in a swelling crescendo after the penultimate train scene.
Tom Waits, “Downtown Train”
Waits’ voice is the aural equivalent to a deep bruise. Perfect here to illustrate husband Jacob Shelburne’s repetitive feelings of being spurned by his wife and second fiddle to his son in her affections.
Bjork, “Army of Me”
“If you complain once more ….” Susannah’s self-whispered words on the train ride to Lookout Mountain, in the farmhouse, over and over again. Buck up, sister. There’s nobody else here to save you.
Sturgill Simpson, “Life Ain’t Fair and the World Is Mean”
Satirical, jaunty accompaniment to the conclusion of the terrible experience young Francis has when he’s caught after briefly going AWOL on a foraging expedition. It may help you recover from reading about random cruelty.
Linda Ronstadt, “When Will I Be Loved?”
Susannah’s feelings after the scene with Colonel Finch at Union headquarters in Chattanooga. If you’ve lived long enough, you know.
Erma Franklin, “Piece of My Heart”
There’s no denying that in Measure of Devotion, many of the problems between mother and son are because (on her side, anyway) the feelings lean toward the Oedipal. Susannah travels across large swaths of our country, but she also journeys into an awareness of how she has contributed to the friction in the relationship. “Piece of My Heart” marks the point where Susannah’s pain is a gordian knot of confusion and grief. “With all the love I give you, it’s never enough”—that’s right sister—and it takes her awhile to realize that what she’s been offering is not real love. To me, the 1967 Erma Franklin arrangement gets closer to this kind of emotional evolution, as opposed to (what seems to me like) the more self-destructive Joplin version.
The Beatles, “Blackbird”
A woman of color taking hold of her life, no longer derivative, refusing to be defined by the lives of others. Singing now in the dead of night. This is what’s happening during Letty’s departure from Susannah at the depot in Louisville. You go, girl! Fly!
And another song for this same Letty moment …
Nina Simone, “Feeling Good”
Again, hard-won freedom and self-reliance, fully grounded in the moment, with all senses and the whole heart reaching toward whatever is right here, right now. That’s what I want for Letty as she’s walking across that railroad platform into a new life.
Neil Diamond, “Holly Holy”
The mystery and joy, the layers, the density of this song. The physicality of love like a freight train thundering from out of a tunnel into the light. In the book’s final scene, there are birds swooping in flocks out over the Charles River; there is a “lonely child” reaching for peace and safety in a stranger’s home; there’s the grief for a man who will never walk upright. And then there is a knock on the door. A gospel choir singing it out, singing it strong. Yeah!
Gabriel Fauré, Piano Quartet No. 2 in g minor, Op. 45, Finale IV (Allegro molto)
The relentless forward motion and energy of this piece says it all. The minor key sets down a magnificent sadness, in waves of beautiful harmony that keep churning forward, like the life drive. Then we get moments of joy in major chord progressions, then back to turmoil, in and out of the sun, until finally the coda brings us fully into daylight, landing in the bright key of G Major. It’s all there, the losses, the grief, the sense of futility, and the love left standing in the end—inexhaustible, eternal. It’s the whole novel in eight minutes.
Nell Joslin is a native of Raleigh, North Carolina and received her MFA from North Carolina State University. Besides a fiction writer, she has been a public school teacher, journalist, and attorney. She currently lives in Raleigh.