Cedric the Entertainer looked no further than his own grandfather to encourage his first novel.
“Flipping Boxcars,” out Sept. 12 (Amistad/HarperCollins), tells the story of Floyd “Babe” Boyce, a bootlegger in Caruthersville, Mo. (Cedric’s hometown), and unfolds over July 4th weekend in 1948.
“Babe is my [maternal] grandfather and these can be stories that I might hear, my mother and her brothers talking about him or any individual telling the story of his personality and among the things he had done,” said Cedric, who stars in “The Neighborhood” on CBS and who wrote the book with Alan Eisenstock.
“[Babe] had passed before I used to be born but I might still have these very clear images of him, sometimes in my adult life, of things he would say to me and what he can be wearing on the time — and it was really weird.
“I attempted to think about our connection to our family, our lineage and sometimes how people would say, ‘You walk identical to your uncle … you will have the identical cadence or the way in which you say a word,’” said Cedric, 59 (born Cedric Kyles). “And I began enthusiastic about that connection and about tips on how to write a story about someone that I feel I do know — but who I’ve never met.
“And that’s where the fiction part is available in.”
Because the novel progresses, readers are transported into Babe’s world and meet his partner in crime, Karter (they served together in World War II). Together, they make a cope with Chicago crime syndicate boss Tommy Wojak and want to boost $54,000 to purchase 3,000 cases of untaxed bourbon arriving by railroad from Canada.
Things go awry after Babe, who can read cards, loses big on the craps table and, in an effort to avoid wasting his marriage and his family, tries to tug off a train robbery with unexpected results.
Cedric said he and Eisenstock collaborated on the novel by talking several times every week.
“I had plenty of little notes and I might send him over themes and thoughts of what the characters looked like and dressed like,” he said. “We sat and talked about what I assumed the book must be — the tone … I’m a giant fan of the Walter Mosley ‘Devil in a Blue Dress’ era, where I felt black men in America had this desire to be very powerful and entrepreneurial but found that the times were really different.
“But for those who saw them, they looked like gentlemen, they dressed like gentlemen they usually moved in a completely different type of way,” he said. “I just loved that a part of the culture of us finding and defining and pushing through and prodding to say, ‘Hey, I’m here, and I deserve equal ground.’”
Cedric said he “most definitely” considered “Flipping Boxcars” as either a movie or TV series.
“One in all the things that led to the book was that I’d began to interrupt out a series, which has plenty of these same elements,” he said. “But I assumed the series needed to be in a more metropolitan area, so I began to develop it around my grandfather coming to St. Louis later in life, later than [‘Flipping Boxcars’] takes place.
“I felt I could tell more within the novel form in fictional tales and after meeting Alan became more intrigued with this,” he said. “I assumed a book, and possibly a series of books, can be more enjoyable — and then spin it right into a TV show … or an incredible movie.”
“When you consider [Babe] you begin to feel like, ‘Oh, man, there are such a lot of ways to take this story,’” he said. “Even on this book we’ve three different cliffhangers that draw you back in like, ‘What happened here and what happened there?’
“I’ve already began to interrupt out a few ideas in case we’ve the chance to begin a second book.”