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L'il Sis and Nooj
Written & Published by Jeff Houlahan
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In the spring of 1930, twenty-year-old Eve “L’il Sis” LeGrand arrives in Harlem with a guitar, a stubborn faith in her talent, and nowhere else to go. Within a week, she’s hiding under a bar room table beside Nadine “Nooj” Holloway as gunfire tears through the club. By morning, Eve has followed Nooj into Harlem’s dangerous underworld of numbers runners, drug turf wars—and music that feels like revelation.
Harlem is a rough but exciting place. The hundred blocks scissored between 110th and 155th are an explosive mix of rage and joy that will birth some of the greatest art in American history. It’s a tough demanding world and even tougher if you’re a woman. In those first days, Nooj and Eve discover that each has a glorious talent but together they are transcendent. It’s not that Nooj can sing like Lady Day and L’il Sis can play like Charlie Patton, it’s that what they create together is something new. We follow the two women for the next several decades - in the early years when, their band, the Shuffle Kings travel the Chitlin circuit and the later years, after a late night car accident breaks up the band. Eve and Nooj have celestial gifts, but an angel’s touch always leaves a mark. |
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This is the story of two enormously gifted women who know that God has whispered in their ears but that few care to hear what she’s said. Even the blessed have to pay their rent, mourn lost lovers and seek relief from human pain. Every step they take is in the shadow of their gift as they try and come to terms with the distance between what was promised and what delivered.
L’il Sis and Nooj is a literary historical novel at ~175000 words. It was loosely inspired by a story published in 2014 in The New York Times magazine called The Ballad of Geeshie and Elvie about two lost blues singers of the early 1900’s. It’s a reminder that our lives are smaller for the works of genius lost to prejudice, ignorance and feckless time. It will appeal to readers of Half-Blood Blues and The Final Revival of Opal & Nev, combining lost musical genius with a fierce portrait of black female artistic partnership. L'il Sis and Nooj is about a gifted guitarist and a transcendent blues singer in 1930s Harlem, who rise from the violent underworld of numbers runners to electrify the Chitlin’ Circuit - until fame, betrayal, and a devastating accident force them to confront the price of being heard in a world determined to erase them.
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