A newly married couple purchased a manuscript from an antiquarian bookseller titled, ‘The Universal Language Isn’t Love or Music but Loneliness’—completed in 1940 by unknown author, William Travers. Reading and discussing the work changed their lives . . .and their marriage.
Waking in hospital Lieutenant Travers learns the war’s over. The Armistice has been signed. He shuns convention and, armed with an alto saxophone, turns his back on America to remain in Paris. He’s a jazzman at heart, so a jazzman he’ll remain. Throughout the Roaring ‘20s and Lean ‘30s, he encounters a bevy of characters: the artists of Montparnasse; the ladies at the brothel; the curator at a museum; the stiff-collard Edwardians and the Bright Young Things who dance at London’s Savoy Hotel; the fiery Yorkshire sheep farmer who is half American; the hard-bitten landlady in London; and, a Soho night club owner—the epicentre of everything illegal. On the eve of the Blitz in September 1940, he performs one more gig.