A Symphony of Secrets, Slocumb - A*

                      Dr. Bern Hendricks, a U.Va. musicologist, is asked to come to the Delaney Foundation offices in NY. The foundation was founded in the 1930's by America's greatest classical composer, Frederic Delaney. The foundation has found the famous missing Red Symphony, which Delaney had lost in the 20's. As Hendricks and a friend, Eboni Washington, a gifted computer specialist, pore over the notes that accompany the symphony as they try to prepare it for publication, they notice a few scribbles that attract their attention. Delaney was famous for indecipherable doodles that were interspersed with his writings. The letters J-o-R do not fit into anything that Bern has ever seen in decades of working on Delaney material. Bern and Eboni do some digging and ascertain that almost a century ago Delaney shared the same address as a Josephine Reed, a Black woman who had come to NY from the deep South.

                     Jo Reed and Freddy Delaney had met in a Harlem jazz club in 1918. As the only white player in a group, Delaney was about to get kicked out for sloppy playing until the remarkably talented Reed began to instruct him on the piano. Soon she was living in his apartment and they worked together to embellish a song that Josephine had written. Freddy sold it, under his name, to a Tin Pan Alley publisher. Soon, Jo's music and his lyrics were selling so well that he set up his own shop to enter the publishing business. As Fred become more obsessed with success, Josephine withdrew into her own world as this new go-go era was not to her liking. The two began to drift apart.

                    Bern and Eboni travel to Reed's hometown and come away with a century old trunk filled with Delaney doodles. They realize that the doodles are not Delaney's, they are Reed's. It slowly dawns on them that Reed was, at a minimum, a co-creator of all of the early work attributed to Delaney.  Both Bern and Eboni decide to continue to make inquiries, and not to advise the foundation. The foundation eventually figures out what they are up to and calls in their heaviest firepower. Lawyers threaten draconian enforcement of the NDA's and the board assures Bern they'll destroy his career if he publicizes Josephine Reed's role. That said, they do not fire him and he continues to work on Red. He realizes that it wasn't just Delaney's show tunes that Reed had composed, it was also his masterpiece symphonies, including Red. Delaney was a fraud, his reputation unjustified, and the foundation could be exposed to major losses and lawsuits. Taking advantage of an uneducated woman of color was never acceptable. Eboni and Bern research the board members and the remaining Delaneys and come up with enough dirt to compel a sit down. In the end, justice is done. Josephine's heirs are compensated, and the appropriate credit is given to her. Just an awesome novel.