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Solo

by Kwame Alexander

Family, music, and a search for belonging

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Awards & Recognition

  • Bestseller

    New York Times bestseller

  • Critical praise

    Kirkus Reviews: “A contemporary hero's journey, brilliantly told”

    Kirkus Reviews praised Solo as “A contemporary hero's journey, brilliantly told.”

AlbakiReads Editorial

Family, music, and a search for belonging

Blade Morrison wants distance from the troubled legacy of his rock-star father, Rutherford, and from a family marked by loss. Songwriting offers a connection the two share, while Blade’s relationship with Chapel is strained by her parents’ assumptions about his future. After Rutherford disrupts Blade’s high school graduation, a newly revealed family secret—and a letter—opens questions about identity, roots, and where home might be. Kwame Alexander and Mary Rand Hess frame this young adult story around family ties, romantic attachment, and the ways a young person makes sense of inherited history.

Good fit for readers who enjoy

  • Teens and young adults interested in stories about family relationships and identity.
  • Readers drawn to fiction featuring music and songwriting.
  • Readers interested in a young Black protagonist’s search for roots and belonging.

Themes

Family legacy and lossIdentity and rootsMusic and songwritingRomantic relationshipsBelonging and home

Based on publisher information and book metadata.

Book overview

Solo by Kwame Alexander and Mary Rand Hess is a New York Times bestseller! Kirkus Reviews said Solo is, "A contemporary hero's journey, brilliantly told." Through the story of a young Black man searching for answers about his life, Solo empowers, engages, and encourages teenagers to move from heartache to healing, burden to blessings, depression to deliverance, and trials to triumphs.

Blade never asked for a life of the rich and famous. In fact, he'd give anything not to be the son of Rutherford Morrison, a washed-up rock star and drug addict with delusions of a comeback. Or to no longer be part of a family known most for lost potential, failure, and tragedy, including the loss of his mother. The one true light is his girlfriend, Chapel, but her parents have forbidden their relationship, assuming Blade will become just like his father.

In reality, the only thing Blade and Rutherford have in common is the music that lives inside them. And songwriting is all Blade has left after Rutherford, while drunk, crashes his high school graduation speech and effectively rips Chapel away forever. But when a long-held family secret comes to light, the music disappears. In its place is a letter, one that could bring Blade the freedom and love he's been searching for, or leave him feeling even more adrift.

Solo:

    Is written by New York Times bestselling author and Newbery Medal and Coretta Scott King Book Award-winner Kwame AlexanderShowcases Kwame's signature intricacy, intimacy, and poetic style, by exploring what it means to finally go homeAn #OwnVoices novel that features a BIPOC protagonist on a search for his roots and identityReceived great reviews from Publishers Weekly, School Library Journal, Booklist, and Kirkus.

If you enjoy Solo, check out Swing by Kwame Alexander and Mary Rand Hess.

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