Mill Creek, North Carolina, is faced with annihilation when its sole employer and landlord, Caesar Textiles, reverses a decision to sell company-owned houses to its employees and even threatens to raze the town. Many townspeople speculate that the company's motive lies in its refusal to deal with the request of a mill employee who wants to purchase a house on Main instead of the "colored" street where he lives. As the boundaries of the 1960s village are encroached upon by the world outside - television, rock and roll, the civil rights movement, drugs, and the draft - Clay Coleman struggles to become a man. At night, Clay plunges into the forbidden world of rhythm and blues offered up by his idol, DJ John R, over the "black" radio station, WLAC. His heart aches with every song as he obsesses over his pudgy object of desire, Irene. When best friend, Fletch - cool, popular, and everything Clay is not - turns Clay onto marijuana, it's love at first toke. Clay desperately tries to make sense of it all as his town and his life threaten to fall apart around him.
About the Author: R. Leonard Jolley worked in a cotton mill during summers while in college and for a year after graduating- he says the longest year of his life. He spent his first twenty-three years in Cliffside, NC, a mill village where his parents and grandparents worked as mill hands, a title they carried with dignity. Jolley says he learned as much in the mill as he did in school-things he could never have learned in a classroom. Music is not so much Leonard Jolley's avocation as his passion. At age nine, he saw Elvis Presley on The Ed Sullivan Show and was hooked. With his weekly allowance, he collected rock and roll records. Blues, rhythm and blues, and jazz followed. In the seventies, Jolley hosted a show, Progressive Sampler, on South Carolina Educational Radio where he played rock and all its hybrid off-shots. According to Jolley, "I talked too much, believing that was what people did on educational radio." After thirty years of social work, he is retired. He smiles when he speaks of his wife. "She's a wonderful woman I met when she was a summer secretary for the Department of Mental Health." He adds, "If asked, we always smile and say, 'we met at the State Hospital.' We have no children. That's intentional. We've always had cats and dogs. I guess that's intentional, too." When Jolley's attention is not diverted by the mundane chores that go with living, he writes, reads, listens to the continuous music that flows through the house, and watches birds from the background gazebo. He says, "I am generally congenial and somewhat opinionated. While I enjoy my solitude, the company of friends is always welcome."