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Nations Within

You don’t know me

Edek Casimire Jura is a Detroit cop with dark secrets. Chief among them his parentage and his lifestyle. Ed joined the force in 1962 and cut his law enforcement chops on Detroit’s east side. 1960’s Detroit was a place of contradictions. Motown bands were celebrated around the world, but in Detroit, even after the legislation that mandated fair housing and did away with Jim Crow laws, the reality hadn’t caught up.

Black Detroiters had to move carefully and quietly if they were to survive and thrive. Racial discrimination wasn’t the only kind of intolerance alive and well. An apparent LGBT community was decades away, but that didn’t mean one didn’t exist.

Playlist for Nations Within

When you read each chapter of Nations Within, you’ll notice that the chapter title is also the title of a song. Download the playlist and listen along while you read.  (Song titles are linked to Amazon Digital Music)

  1. Pride and Joy • Marvin Gay
  2. Can’t Help Myself • Four Tops
  3. Heatwave • Martha and the Vandellas
  4. Ain’t that Peculiar • Marvin Gaye
  5. Shotgun • Junior Walker and The All-Stars
  6. Quicksand • Martha Reeves and the Vandellas
  7. Uptight • Stevie Wonder
  8. Going to a Go Go • The Miracles
  9. Nothin’  but Heartaches • The Supremes
  10. Playboy • The Marveletts
  11. The Hunter Gets Captured by the Game • The Marvelettes
  12. Baby, I’m For Real • The Originals
  13. It’s the same Old Song • Four Tops
  14. I Could Never Love Another (After Loving You) • The Temptations
  15. I’m Living in Shame • The Supremes
  16. Don’t Mess with Bill • The Marvelettes
  17. Motown Is Burning • John Lee Hooker
  18. Blowin’ in the Wind • Stevie Wonder

The Straits of Detroit

I know, I know, Detroit is French for straits, but who knows that? Well, you do, because you noticed the redundant use in English and in French, and you were tisk, tisking me, weren’t you?

Just to set the record straight, according to Google in its definition of Detroit “the city was named by French colonists, referring to the Detroit River (French: le Détroit du Lac Érié, meaning the strait of Lake Erie), linking Lake Huron and Lake Erie; in the historical context, the strait included the St. Clair River, Lake St. Clair and the Detroit River.”

My dilemma is that the Straits of Lake Erie sounds like it’s someplace in Ontario or Ohio. Those places are close, but they are not my geographic hometown location. So, I elected to be clear about this and sacrifice the literal French to English translation.

This is the first book in the Straits of Detroit series. Every story in the series is set in Detroit in the middle of the last century. The historical details are correct to the best of my ability. Sometimes that’s flattering to the city and sometimes it’s not.