MOTOWN BURNING by John Jeffrie

John Jeffrie’s novel Motown Burning breathes life into an all too familiar battered and bruised Detroit, reminding me of John Dos Passos’s Manhattan Transfer, how 200-plus characters as a collective group define New York City, where the setting “becomes” the main character with a steady flow of immigrants coming and going, searching for opportunity, for a place to call home.


In Motown Burning the ’67 Detroit Riots serve as the major focal point in unraveling the unfortunate events involving Aram Pehlivanian, aka A.P., aka Motown. He’s a hot-head, a perceived trouble-maker, raised by his uncle in the inner city, loved by a girl named Katie. The story begins in medias res, with Motown battling the Viet Cong. Other soldiers seek his experience in the jungle; believing their chances of survival will increase if they stick close to him. In the words of Saint:

Man, I tell you, I loved that white boy. I mean, I wasn’t too hip on being moved into that unit, like I was moving into Green Acres, you know, all those white folks … I was about survival, man, my own survival, and I don’t care if you black, white, purple, or striped I was gonna hang with you if I thought you would cover my ass for a few extra seconds a life.

As the story unfolds, business owners, police, National Guardsmen, Blank Panthers, Vietnam veterans, and regular citizens share experiences and opinions of the ’67 Detroit Riots and how they were able to survive. All these perspectives, whether you agree with them or not, reveal the complexities and misconceptions of the different types of people. Here’s one such character’s take on the rioting, Judge Donaldson:

How many buildings and vehicles and communications networks destroyed, how many millions of dollars worth of infrastructure lost? ... You know what’s going to happen now? Hmm? I’ll tell you, and you mark my words, you’re going to see a mass exodus of white citizens from within the city limits. You watch.

He goes on to talk about his role in the justice system, a role that affects Motown:

We’ve got to weed out our culture, take a hoe and cut out the vermin and parasites so the fruit can grow. If we have to ship the waste to Vietnam, then so be it … Give unproductive, dead-end misfits rifles and send them off to a jungle someplace, hopefully never to return.

He also believes this to be a viable solution for alleviating prison overcrowding.

But what happens to those so-called “productive” citizens, those “law-abiding” citizens who are issued weapons and sent to quell the disturbance in Detroit? Private Simkowski, a National Guardsman, says:

Shoot first, ask questions later. Something comes up, I only got one life and I was going to defend myself no matter who I had to pull the trigger on.

At what cost to society can peace be restored? Because of Simkowski’s actions a mother suffers greatly. Selma:

My baby died because of a glass of water …Those soldiers and tanks and police weren’t here to protect us.

Jeffrie does a wonderful job of depicting the hopes and fears through the voices of his characters. The novel is divided into three sections:

I. The Jungle – what happened to A.P. in Vietnam?
II. The City – how A.P. met Katie and got through the ’67 Detroit Riot (and more about how he ended up in Vietnam)
III.The Return – how Katie saved A.P. and how he got home.

By telling the story of Motown in a non-linear fashion using different vantage points, Jeffrie challenges the reader to observe the social unrest here and abroad as if to say: Here is the biggest defining moment of our fair city of Detroit and its people; here is why Detroiters, regardless of how dire the circumstances, have resilience and never give-up. Aram Pehlivanian, aka Motown, is such a character.

Motown Burning is available for purchase at John Jeffire's website: click here.