In The Blood

The trouble with K.C. Brown's dream of playing alto sax for a local jazz band is that she's a nineteen-year-old white girl, the band members are middle-aged black men, the year is 1948, and they all live in a racially divided town in Iowa.

To succeed, she and the band must overcome resistance from both sides of the color barrier, and accept that ambition often comes with loss.

In the Blood explores the cultural, sexual, generational, and economic issues in post-World War II America, framed in...