Song of the Shank

Set in the nineteenth century, American author Jeffery Renard Allen’s novel Song of the Shank (2014) follows Thomas Greene Wiggins, a blind and autistic musical prodigy. Born a slave, Wiggins is exploited by cynical managers during his rise to prominence as “Blind Tom,” musical genius. The follow-up to Wiggins’s 2000 debut, Rails Under My Back, Song of the Shank has been hailed by critics as marking the arrival of a major writer: “Allen’s visionary work, as startlingly inventive as one of his subject’s performances, should propel him to the front rank of American novelists” (Kirkus Reviews).

The novel opens a year after the end of the Civil War. Teenage Tom and his white guardian, Eliza Bethune arrive in an unnamed northern city (resembling New York). There they are approached by a black man who offers to reunite Tom with his recently emancipated mother.

From here the novel moves back to Tom’s childhood. His mother, Charity, realizes soon after his birth that he is blind. When Tom is a toddler, his own family is placed at auction and sold to General James Bethune. They relocate to the Bethunes’ plantation, Hundred Gates, where Charity and her daughters combine hard domestic work with the challenge of caring for a blind toddler. Soon they note that Tom has some “curious” habits. He is uncannily able to mimic sounds and often gets into scrapes as he sightlessly pursues interesting new noises. More troublingly, he harms himself, staring at the sun and poking at his eyes with a stick.



The mistress of the plantation, Mary Bethune, grants Charity permission to bring her son to the house while she works. There he overhears the Bethune girls’ piano lesson; when they leave, he clambers onto the piano stool and flawlessly reproduces the pieces he heard them practice. General Bethune spots a moneymaking opportunity, and soon “Blind Tom” is performing in venues all over the state.

Bethune turns Tom over to a professional manager, Perry Oliver. Oliver sets about grooming him for bigger performances, hiring an “understudy,” a boy named Seven, who befriends Tom and cares for him as well as training him. For years, Oliver and Seven take Tom from city to city. Tom’s act is part musical, part freak-show. He recites speeches and chapters from novels verbatim. As tensions between North and South build towards Civil War, Tom composes patriotic songs to inspire his Southern audiences.

When the War breaks out, General Bethune takes back his property, telling Perry Oliver that after the War he will need the money Tom brings in for himself. Tom, now a young teenager, is deeply hurt by the loss of his first and only friend.



Bethune continues to “manage” Tom until a black man named Tabbs Gross offers to buy Tom from him. General Bethune agrees to the sale and Gross hands over the money. On the day that Tom is to be transferred, however, General Bethune claims to have discovered that Gross has a criminal record. As a result, the contract is void. He keeps Tom and most of Gross’s money.

Tom is passed down to the General’s son, Sharpe Bethune, and Sharpe’s wife, Eliza. When Sharpe and his “stage manager” Thomas Warhurst leave to fight for the South, Tom is left in Eliza’s charge. Neither man returns; Eliza becomes Tom’s sole caretaker. Eliza refuses to make Tom perform, creating an opportunity for Seven to find another musically-gifted black man to pass off as the “the original Blind Tom.”

The war ends and Gross seeks out Tom’s mother, Charity. He brings her to Edgemere, an all-black island community of fugitive and freed slaves, promising that she will be reunited with her son there.



Gross is the man we encountered at the beginning of the novel. Discovering Eliza and Tom living in a city apartment, he offers to return Tom to his mother. Eliza, exhausted by the effort of caring for Tom and fearful about her own future, agrees to relinquish Tom to Gross’s care.

At Edgemere, Tom behaves coldly toward his mother. To Gross’s disappointment, Tom refuses to play music. Charity begins working at a refugee camp in the city.

The Edgemere community comes under threat. While Charity is at work, Tabbs takes Tom and another orphan boy to find Eliza. He persuades Eliza that Tom is in danger in the North. He proposes that the four of them travel to the South where, he says, there are soldiers protecting the newly emancipated black population.



Tabbs disguises himself as a woman because as a black man he cannot be seen traveling with a white woman. However, on the train, Tabbs’s disguise fails, and a group of white men attacks him. The orphan boy tries to defend Tabbs with the “shank” (improvised knife) he carries in his belt. Both are carried away by their white attackers.

Eliza and Tom carry on, reaching their destination. They set up home in an apartment, where they live alone. Neighbors note the mysterious music that streams from their home—until one day, it stops.