A Love Song for Ricki Wilde

“When it came to the Wilde Funeral Homes businesses, all Ricki ever cared about was one thing: the flowers. The bouquets, the branches, the petals. The fantastical sprays. Growing up, her one respite from the rigidity of the Wildes—and the chilly business of dying—was the wooded garden a mile or so beyond their estate.”

Williams is known for infusing humor into the melancholy. This passage offers a salient example of such irony. Although Ricki intends to flee the unsavory family business of death by opening up a shop dedicated to the propagation and curation of living things, she is soon to be involved in an inescapable death curse.

“Had her family been right about her all along? They always expected her to flail, to fail. But despite them, Ricki had never felt like a loser. She simply felt misplaced. Like a duck raised by squirrels. She’d always suspected that given the chance to do what she did best, she’d succeed.”

Ricki feels like an outcast in her family, underestimated and underappreciated by her parents and sisters, who are embarrassed of the woman she truly is. Ricki will need to learn to accept herself and stop limiting herself as a way of seeking their approval.

“Ricki was wilting. Why did everyone seem to know how to schmooze, be social, be normal, be cool, except for her? Was no one else paralyzed at the thought of unleashing the car crash of their personality on an innocent stranger? Her self-consciousness was a prison.”

Ricki’s social awkwardness makes her a relatable character that readers can support and empathize with—a key feature of romance novel heroines, whose eventual success in love must feel earned and deserving. Her awkwardness at first drives her false belief that who she is will never be enough for anyone else—a belief that she gets over during the course of the novel.

“Late at night, exhausted from the fields, he’d sit at his secondhand piano and teach himself to play the tune. In no time, he could replicate James Johnson’s recording. But as he conjured the notes over and over, imprinting them on his brain, Breeze sensed a newer sound just beyond his fingertips, one he couldn’t grasp yet. And he knew that in Fallon, he never would.”

Flashback chapters of Ezra’s early life present the Harlem Renaissance as a period of glitz and glamour; the novel highlights the overwhelming and appealing quality of the bustling artistic neighborhood by showing us how Ezra perceives the city and the people in it once he arrives.

“She wished she could tell her newfound granddaughter that the smartest thing she could do for herself was set her own standards for living. Her father be damned. But Ricki would have to learn that lesson on her own.”

This passage presents Della as the mentor figure she will continue to be for Ricki. Not only does Della look out for Ricki emotionally and physically, but she also encourages her to control her own life and live without regrets.

“To Della, it was clear that surrounding herself with drama and chaos made Ricki feel safer than standing still did. As a person who’d spent a lifetime preoccupying herself with her husband’s needs—without time to ever examine her own—Della understood this. And she was touched by Ricki’s vulnerability. And she would protect her, as much as Ricki would let her.”

Della displays a maternal instinct for Ricki that illustrates the depths of their relationship. By establishing this connection well early on, Williams ensures that her death will strike a deep emotional chord with readers.

“What they heard as frenzied abandonment was the sound of his rage. Their joyous release was his escape, his chance to outrun the memories that stalked him. Jazz was freedom. But grief was his fuel. It was that simple and that terrible.”

Ezra finds freedom in playing out his emotions on the piano—something he has to learn from mentors who at first compliment his mechanical technique but criticize him for imitating the playing style of another performer. This form of expression is also empowering, as it gives him the opportunity to work through his trauma in productive and often healing ways.

“A tiny, passionate community had clustered around Ricki’s post—and it felt exhilarating. It felt like validation. And so she did the same with another arrangement that didn’t sell […] at the entrance of 2294½ Adam Clayton Powell Jr. Boulevard. It used to be Smalls Paradise, Old Harlem’s only Black-owned cabaret, where 1920s waiters danced with serving trays on their heads, and 1940s waiters included a hustler called Detroit Red, who hadn’t yet become Malcolm X. It was now an IHOP.”

Ricki seeks out The Subtle Imprint of History every time she lays a bouquet at a new place to alert others to its past significance. The success her social media accounts gain after she begins posting content like this illustrates how willing people are to learn history that’s been lost to time and neglect. The novel is hopeful that this important history is meaningful to many people who might be eager to learn what Ricki researches and presents to them.

“Legend has it […] he was at the Scene in New York City, hanging at the bar. Some guy sat next to him, singing something about some old girlfriend who did voodoo, and the moon turning red. Jimi liked the psychedelic sound of it and scribbled the phrases on a napkin. When asked, Jimi couldn’t remember who the man was. Crazy to think that some anonymous cat’s responsible for the greatest blues-rock refrain of all time.”

This allusion to Jimi Hendrix, the noted psychedelic rock guitarist of the 1960s, subtly calls attention to an overlap in Ezra’s story and the cultural history Ricki is aware of concerning Harlem. Though she does not know this at the time, the mystery inspirational “cat” in this passage was Ezra, but he was never remembered due to being a Perennial.

“You know, dear, I sometimes wonder what mark I will have left on the world when I go. What was my purpose here? I’m not so sure. I should figure that out soon, I reckon. No one ever knows how much time is left.”

Della strongly encourages Ricki to leave a legacy behind and find a purpose worth living for—a purpose Della often suggests is romantic love. Della’s guidance gives Ricki the emotional support that she has never received from her family and the direction Ricki needs to make it on her own.

“The gesture’s appreciated. I’m just…tired. Inventing slogans to justify your humanity, again and again, is depressing. ‘Black Lives Matter’ was ‘Black Power’ was ‘A Black Man Was Lynched Yesterday.’ Feels like Groundhog Day.”

One of the many ways Williams tracks the way historical markers leave traces of themselves that are discoverable in the present is through language—the names of people and places, and here, the similarities of slogans calling attention to civil rights issues and anti-Black racism. The passage is interested in the way these slogans—“Black Lives Matter” from the 2020s, “Black Power” from the 1970s, and “A Black Man Was Lynched Yesterday” from the 1930s—all try to convey the same idea, that Black people should be seen as equal to white people by emphasizing their shared humanity.

“But ‘good’ was too weak a word, because nothing had ever felt like this before: transcendent and ruinous and soulmate-perfect.”

The relationship between Ezra and Ricki is described in language that emphasizes magic and the supernatural. Words such as “transcendent” and “soulmate-perfect” point to the novel’s fantasy element, which not only allows Ezra to have lived for over a century, but also creates between him and Ricki a fairytale bond of love that can transcend time and space.

“For a clotheshorse and an avid traveler, Breeze was on the frugal side. He’d made only two truly major, life-changing purchases since he’d started making money: his brownstone in Strivers’ Row and his piano, an elegant Steinway constructed from rosewood. A square piano, ultra-rare and tuned to his precise specifications. That piano was his baby.”

This passage lays out the origins of one of the novel’s most important symbols—the old piano Ricki finds in her apartment, which used to be Ezra’s prized instrument (see Symbols & Motifs). This object is one of many ways the novel connects these characters through uncanny coincidences that suggest fate and destiny.

“Felice was acting strange. Her dancing was frenetic, chaotic, like a conjure woman raising the dead. All night, she danced the Charleston madly through the crowd, pausing every so often to peck Ezra on the lips as he sat behind his piano. This was more territorial than anything else. When she kissed him, it was passionless, her expression terrifyingly blank. Every so often she’d stop dancing to lurk in a far corner, slowly peeling off her nail varnish, her eyes darting around the room as red flakes pooled around her feet.”

This section uses descriptive imagery to depict Felice’s behavior on the night leading up to her curse and death by suicide. Her frenzied dancing is compared to a necromancer’s movements—a very pointed simile that underscores her harmful use of voodoo and ability to summon the spirits of the dead to do her bidding. Similarly, the red flakes of nail polish pooling around her feet resemble blood, symbolizing the impending end of her life.

“She dug deep inside herself to find the strength to not fall for this. To not get sucked into some dude’s madness, like all the times before. Her father’s admonishment, You let things happen to you, was imprinted on her brain. But she’d changed. Ricki would dictate the terms of her own story. No one else.”

Ricki’s desire to change and take her father’s words into account is illustrated by her personal and business decisions when she arrives in New York City. By not passively allowing things to happen to her, Ricki is able to take control of her life and form it into something she enjoys.

“Breeze Walker (January 3, 1900–unknown) was an American stride jazz pianist and composer. Popular during his Harlem Renaissance heyday, he recorded several hit songs from 1924–1928, but the music hasn’t survived and Walker is largely forgotten today. In 1927, he was hired to lead the house band, The Friday Knights, at famed Harlem cabaret Eden Lounge. Sometime in early 1928, Breeze Walker vanished and was never seen again. His disappearance remains unsolved. In 1929, an electrical fire burned Eden Lounge to the ground—and with it, the only known recordings of Walker’s songs, all of which had been stored in the basement, including ‘Happy Sad,’ ‘Hotcha Gotcha,’ and ‘Midnight Jasmine.’ There were no fatalities, but historians cite Eden Lounge’s demise as the symbolic end of the Jazz Age.”

This passage illustrates the sad story of Ezra’s rise to prominence and his fall into oblivion after becoming a Perennial. He goes from a celebrated musician whose work is popular and successful to one whose only ability to compose is offering brief, anonymous suggestions to other artists.

“She’d wanted to be easy to be around, because deep down, she believed that her true self was too much. The Wildes had certainly reinforced this idea her whole life. Ricki was always too much. Unlovable.”

This passage illustrates the false beliefs Ricki has struggled with for most of her life because of the treatment she’s received from her family. Part of her character arc is overcoming these self-defeating and dysfunctional ideas about herself.

“Ricki couldn’t give in to the inevitability of death. Instead, it made her want to live harder than anyone else, go deeper, feel everything, grow things, and approach the world with sharpened senses.”

After living by her family’s rules, Ricki finally demands to live on her own terms, not matter the consequences. This newfound zeal for life helps her brace against her imminent death and fight back with every scrap of hope she can conjure.

“She wanted to draw him to her chest and comfort him, protect him. To smother him with so much steady, secure affection that he’d forget what it was like to suffer alone. Ricki wanted to be Ezra’s support, to be there beside him and help share the weight he was carrying. She wanted to be the one person for whom he could finally let down his walls.”

Ricki desires to care for Ezra in a way no one has ever offered to care for him before. Ezra is always the caretaker in his relationships, never the recipient of someone else’s solicitude. Her willingness to be there for him explains the eventual longevity of their romance and the success of their marriage.

“I grew up, but my magical thinking didn’t. The world’s full of mysteries we can’t explain. The Bermuda Triangle. Siberian sinkholes. Malaysia Airlines Flight 370. Twinkies.”

Ezra points out examples of everyday magic that range from modern myths like the Bermuda triangle to tragedies unsolved because of political dysfunction like the downed flight. He then adds in the notoriously long-lived junk food Twinkies as a joke. Ezra’s casual approach to the potentially supernatural is the result of his experiences as an immortal man. This attitude is in marked contrast to the responses of other characters to the fantastical elements of the story; because everyone else is flabbergasted or in disbelief about the reality of the voodoo curse, the novel fits into the fantasy genre rather than the genre of magical realism, in which characters accept magical features of their otherwise realistic world as normal and not unusual.

“He’d never shared his story with anyone, and he’d walked alone in it for too long. But now, knowing that Ricki was walking with him, it lessened the despair. In fact, after confiding in her about everything—the church fire, Sonny—he felt more alive than he had in decades.”

Ezra’s character growth is evident in his willingness to rely on someone other than himself, a correction to the maladaptive coping mechanism he developed in response to the trauma of his family’s murder, his cousin’s sad fate, and his life as a quickly forgotten immortal curse victim. This passage highlights his emotional revitalization and Ricki’s importance to this change.

“With all due respect, sometimes when we self-sabotage, it feels safer to blame an outside party. It’s easier to process being wronged by a villain, rather than yourself.”

Mistress Jojo’s words here hint that Ezra’s curse is potentially self-inflicted. While it is true that the curse is Felice’s doing, Ezra’s circumstances have been brought about by his unwillingness to deal with difficult emotions and the unhealthy desire for self-punishment as a dysfunctional way to manage guilt.

“Ezra sat there with full-on heart eyes and a modest hard-on. Did Little Richard Wilde just square up on a witch for him? Was he just figuratively little-spooned? He was in awe! No one had ever stood up for him like that. A woman had never been his knight in shining armor. He was used to being the rescuer.”

Ezra learns that he does not always need to be the sole provider in a relationship, an unbalanced approach to relationships that has led to pain. In allowing himself to rely on Ricki, Ezra grows into the kind of man who can sustain a long-term relationship.