WHERE ARE WE TOMORROW?

Roadies take a break from touring to rethink their lives in Black’s novel.

The people who work for rock star Sadie Estrada are like family, for good or ill. Among them are Alex, the tour electrician, and Lily, Sadie’s long-suffering personal assistant. Alex loves her job, but when she discovers that she’s pregnant, she quits to settle down with her boyfriend, Connor. He feels panicky about the baby, as he already has a grown daughter whose life he’s not much involved with. Then Alex miscarries, and she decides to return to tour life—although some of the joy is gone now that she no longer has seniority. During a concert in Italy, part of the rig falls and injures Sadie, and the crew blames Alex even though she knows she had nothing to do with it. The four women roadies on the tour—Alex, Lily, and two other stagehands—decide to rent a house in Tuscany for a vacation while the tour is stalled, and they bond on their trip. Lily is fed up with the abuse she gets from Sadie; Alex talks about her miscarriage and how painful it was. The pair think about staying in Italy, but their lives manage to catch up with them. Seeing the world of rock performance through the eyes of the roadies takes some of the glam away—they work hard, stay in bad hotels, and travel so much they can’t keep track of where they are, as noted in the title. This aspect of the novel is compelling, as most novels about rock bands follow around the musicians and not the behind-the-scenes crew. But although the plot moves quickly, it feels more like a mere series of events than an arc, and the ending leaves a few things unresolved. Still, Black does a nice job of describing the Tuscany setting, as when the vacationing women reach their destination in a remote village: “The rental house sat two hundred feet beyond a tall stone wall and looked like a place where even the most tightly wound show tech could rest.”

An often intriguing and emotional look at lives on and off the road.