Archive for 'Karp, Larry' THE RAGTIME KID is a historical
mystery based on actual people and events surrounding Scott
Joplin’s composition and publication of The Maple Leaf Rag in
Sedalia, Missouri in 1899. The story is told through the eyes of
Brun Campbell, a young white piano player who hears Scott
Joplin’s “colored” Ragtime music and becomes obsessed with it
and the composer. He leaves his home to study piano with Joplin
in Sedalia and becomes involved in a murder case and an
interracial struggle for control of the black composer’s music.
Until I read this book, I knew little about Joplin or Ragtime
music, but I found this book fascinating. Karp has done a
wonderful job of bringing to life a time and place that seems
very distant to many us now. Karp’s Sedalia is a turbulent
mixture of blacks and whites with strongly held feelings about
the desired relations of the races – former Union and
Confederate soldiers, freed slaves, freeborn blacks,
abolitionists, and KKK members all live in this small town. And