Songs in Ursa Major
In the summer of 1969 on the fictional Massachusetts island of Bayleen, eighteen-year-old singer-songwriter Jane Quinn is pulled on stage to open for the headliner of the Folk Fest after he fails to show. The headliner is Jesse Reid, a brooding early-seventies idol about to break nationally, and the set Jane plays gets the kind of industry attention that changes a life. As Jane and Jesse's professional and romantic entanglement deepens, the costs of being a woman on that side of the sixties music business, credit politics, drug use, custody of one's own songs, stalk her. Emma Brodie's 2021 debut, clearly in conversation with Daisy Jones & The Six and the real ghost of Joni Mitchell, is a slow, period-saturated novel about what artists owe the people who made them.
Themes & atmosphere
What you might want to know about Songs in Ursa Major
The questions readers send us most often, answered without spoilers.
On a 1969 Massachusetts island during the Bayleen folk festival, local singer Jane Quinn fills in for the missing star Jesse Reid. Their summer affair turns her band into a real act, and his life into hers.
Songs in Ursa Major is fictional but inspired by the real 1970s music scene in Laurel Canyon, particularly the Joni Mitchell and James Taylor relationship. Emma Brodie has cited those musicians as touchstones for her invented characters.
Yes. Songs in Ursa Major is Emma Brodie's debut novel, published in 2021. She has since published The Knockout Queen and other fiction.
Songs in Ursa Major was written by Emma Brodie, published in 2021 by Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group.
Songs in Ursa Major is 336 pages in standard print editions, though page counts vary slightly between hardcover, paperback, and large-print formats.
At an average reading pace of about 250 words per minute, Songs in Ursa Major takes most readers 5 to 7 hours to finish.
Songs in Ursa Major is a standalone novel by Emma Brodie, not part of a series.
Songs in Ursa Major is available in hardcover, paperback, ebook, and audiobook formats from Amazon, Bookshop.org, ThriftBooks, and most major bookstores.