The Sky Club

“The Sky Bar tells the story of Jo Salter, a young mountain woman who survives the ravages of the Great Depression to create a new life for herself and her lover as a night club owner and bootlegger. This is the saga of Jo Salter, a country woman from the North Carolina mountains who moves to Asheville after the death of her mother in the winter of 1929. Once there, she sets about constructing a whole new life for herself, a life that no one-including her mother-could have imagined. Jo has a surprising gift. Unbeknownst to those around her, she’s a mathematical prodigy-a woman who sees and thinks in numbers. In Asheville she secures a job as a teller at Central Bank & Trust, the region’s premier banking establishment. She recreates herself as a modern woman while rising professionally at the bank. Along the way, she becomes fascinated by Levi Arrowood, the dark and dangerous manager of the Sky Club, the infamous speakeasy and jazz club on the mountain side above town. On November 20, 1930, the Great Depression comes to Asheville, and Central B & T closes its doors. Jo witnesses this seismic crash from the inside out and scrambles to find a new home and a new job. She finds both at the Sky Club, eventually joining the mysterious Arrowood as partner and lover. With him, she makes a complete life-country and city, banjo and jazz, sex and love. The Sky Bar is the story of money, greed, and life after the crash, told by Jo Salter told in her own words, page by page, as she creates her own imagined life”–