Avery Cunningham joins me to discuss her debut novel, The Mayor of Maxwell Street which is published by Hyperion. A native of Jackson, TN and now a resident of Memphis, Avery has crafted a tale set in the early 1920s in Chicago, as the wealthiest African-American families have gathered for the funeral of the son of the richest black man in the nation. The Sawyer family’s daughter, Nelly, only wants to become a journalist, but her parents have other plans for her future, as she chases after the most mysterious criminal in Chicago’s underworld, The Mayor of Mawell Street.