Kevin Emerson. Exile. New York: Harper, 2014. Print.
Exile borrows a little from Gordon Korman’s Born to Rock, but while it is not as funny as Korman’s books, it has a more realistic view of the pop music world. Summer and Caleb are students at a high school in Southern California whose main mission is the popular arts. Summer is a promoter, and Caleb is a singer-songwriter who mysteriously drops out of a band, causing its breakup.
Summer is moved by Caleb’s songs and beautiful voice and persuades him to form a new band which she will promote. The last band she managed dumped her when they signed a recording deal with Candy Shell Records—the corporate baddies in this book.
When he turns eighteen, Caleb’s single mother tells him that his father was a singer-songwriter of a popular nineties rock group, Allegiance to North. The father died in a famous drug-addled suicide/accident à la Kurt Cobain or Jim Morrison. The challenge for Caleb then becomes that he wants to be recognized for his own talent, not because he is the son of a famous rocker. Still, everyone who knows the secret cannot help making a connection. Think of Jeff Buckley and Tim Buckley.
Since this is a young adult novel written from the girl’s point of view, Caleb and Summer fall for each other, but their female bass player Val (no last name) also seems interested in Caleb.
The band has a real adventure as Caleb and the others try to locate some tapes made by his father shortly before he died of three songs that were on the label of Allegiance to North’s last CD but never made it to the actual CD. This sounds a little like the supposedly great songs that Brian Wilson wrote for the Beach Boys but burned before they were ever recorded. The baddies from Candy Shell Records are trying to get them first.
The story puts together elements that resonate through the legends of a number of rock stars. One warning: While the story does have a resolution of sorts, not all the missing songs have been accounted for. Exile is part one of what promises to be a trilogy.