Review of Symphony of Secrets by Brendan Slocumb

*Symphony of Secrets* by Brendan Slocumb (2023). Published by Anchor.

I don’t remember where exactly I found out about this book, but I do remember this about that moment: I was intrigued immediately about the possibilities that could be explored in such a topic.

I had placed a request to my local library immediately when it came to the time when I had finished reading the premise, and when I went to pick it up, I knew that I was going to read it probably within a day. So that Saturday, I cracked open the book, and I ended up reading all of it over the course of two and a half hours.

When I say I was obsessed with this book, I’m absolutely not kidding. I’m fascinated already with the period the book was set in for portions in the historical past, and I wanted to know so much more about the characters living in that time period.

And, also, I never just sit and read all the way through for books of this length. There were several breaks I had to take periodically just to digest everything going on in the book, and I’m glad I do that. One shouldn’t read a book like this in one shot. Anyways, let’s get on with the review of the book, shall we? I’ve gushed enough already!

A university professor discovers a shocking secret about one of America’s most beloved composers—a Black woman may have written all of his songs.

Symphony of Secrets dives back and forth between two different time periods throughout the book. It starts in the contemporary time period, though, and the protagonist of this section is Bern Hendricks.

He’s a professor down South who found his opportunities in life through a fictional foundation, the Delaney Foundation, that gives scholarships and money to kids in need to learn about the arts. His former benefactors have come knocking at his door when they find what was assumed to be lost to history: Frederick Delaney’s composition titled RED.

Delaney was one of the most prominent composers of the twenties, and Bern absolutely idolizes this guy, so he would be a fool to turn away what the foundation is offering him.

They want to bring him to New York City to make this composition come to life and present it to the public almost a century after it was written. But when Bern comes into town and realizes there are scribbles on the document, he begins to put together the pieces of the puzzle. He enlists his computer extraordinaire friend Eboni to help him out with the process,a and they begin to dig in the archives.

They realize the symbols are linked to a woman named Josephine Reed, who was Black and from the South. They realize she was living with Delaney at the time, and they use the foundation’s plane to go visit her relatives that are still alive in the South. There, in their basement, lies one of Josephine’s missing trunks.

They open it and find many of the sketches that she did during her lifetime, which match the ones being held at the foundation.

As they dig deeper into the research, they uncover an ugly secret: Josephine is the mastermind behind all of Delaney’s works. She is the one who wrote his compositions, but because she was a Black woman in the twenties, and one who would be considered mentally ill due to the fact she can see the world through colors and sounds, her work would have never made it to the big stage. This is where the book begins to diverge into the past, showing how Josephine and Frederick met.

At first, their relationship was good, and Frederick realized the extent of her gift. When he manages to sell one of her songs and it becomes extremely popular around town, he tries to write his own and it fails to sell. Josephine’s, however, manage to be continuously successful.

He forces her to quit her job that she loves, much to her protest, starts his own company to write songs, and Josephine sees his colors start to change before her eyes. He locks her in a room to force her to keep writing, making her lose the very inspiration she had to begin with, and, eventually he kills her when she defies him.

In the present day, Eboni and Bern are targeted by the white leaders of the foundation. They are tracked, monitored, and legally threatened because of what they’ve uncovered, as it could completely destroy the foundation’s power and influence in the world.

Bern, who was so devout to them before, becomes sour by all of this, and is attacked by police officers that are racist at one point hired by the foundation. That’s the last straw, and the two vow to end up getting revenge by getting Josephine’s name out there. And they do just that.

Overall Thoughts

What a wonderful, exciting book. I thought that the prose throughout was excellent, and the worldbuilding and characters scattered throughout multiple time periods were done quite well.

At over four hundred pages, this one is something that should be savored and consumed slowly to digest everything going on, but having a Black professor and his Black friend (or girlfriend by the end) come together to overthrow a white led organization by showing the truth is something that dreams are made of.

While Josephine’s story doesn’t have the picture perfect ending, she is brought to justice, even if the details are a little too convenient towards the end. She had her say by hiding the copy of RED in the elevator shaft, making sure Delaney never got his last laugh towards the world. That’s poetic justice in the end.

Go read this if you haven’t already, seriously.

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