THE LOST GET-BACK BOOGIE by James Lee Burke

Finished We 7/26/17, in fact I finished this Ebook at the library right before the Contemporary Book Club Meeting for THE CONVICTIONS OF JOHN DELAHUNT.

This is an early novel by Burke and I read that it was rejected one hundred and eleven times before it was finally published, and it later was nominated for a Pulitzer prize.

The book is set in 1962 in New Iberia, LA, Louisiana's Angola State Penitentiary, and Missoula, Montana.

Iry Paret is the main character and the title refers to a song that Iry is trying to write. He is an accomplished C&W musician on the guitar and dobro.

The dobro is a way of acoustically making a stringed instrument louder. A metal cone is attached to the body to amplify the sound.

From the book's page at Amazon-

"Iry Paret's done his time -- two years for manslaughter in Louisiana's Angola State Penitentiary.  A man in a bar attacked their lead singer, knocked him out, and then grabbed Iry. Iry had a knife and stabbed the man through the heart. Now the war vet and blues singer is headed to Montana, where he hopes to live clean working on a ranch owned by the father of his prison pal, Buddy Riordan. In prison, Iry tinkered with a song -- "The Lost Get-Back Boogie" -- that never came out quite right. Now, the Riordan family's problems hand him a new kind of trouble, with some tragic consequences. And Iry must get the tune right at last, or pay a fateful price."

When Iry is paroled he decides to leave Louisiana and relocated to Montana. When he was in prison he met Buddy Riordan who played piano in the prison jazz band.

Frank Riordan, Buddy's father, has turned the whole town against the family. Frank wants to shut down the local factories (pulp mills) for environmental reasons, and this will cause several hundred people their jobs.

Buddy is separated from Beth, yet Iry has an affair with her. After Buddy dies (he runs his pickup truck off the road, the truck catches fire, and the ammunition that he was carrying explodes. He was looking for the men that destroyed his father's aviary) he marries Beth and they buy some land and raise Buddy's two young boys in Montana.

The descriptions are beautiful and the characters are well drawn. I would read a grocery list written by James Lee Burke. However, due to the violence of the characters I thought the ending was just a bit too upbeat- it bordered on the 'happily ever after'. But, I certainly wish Iry all the best!