Cultural historian Robert Freund Schwartz, author of "How Britain Got the Blues: The Transmission and Reception of American Blues Styles in the United Kingdom," has read Sara Holliday's upcoming book "A Thousand Dances: A Novel of the British Blues Boom." Schwartz, an authority on the period, had nothing but good things to say:
“A Thousand Dances is a thoroughly engaging novel, part mystery and part coming of age tale set to the sounds of Cyril Davies and Long John Baldry. Sara Holliday takes the reader to the heady, early days of the British R&B boom, from art schools and coffee bars to the club scene, where a chance encounter might lead to drinks with Mick and Keith and conversation with Georgie Fame. I was entranced, not only by her finely wrought and historically detailed portrayal of young, record-obsessed lovers of American music, but also by her sensitively wrought protagonist, Nick Spinnery, negotiating first jobs, relationships, a father still wracked by the aftereffects of World War II, and the birth of British blues rock.”