Joey Woodsman has spent years hiding inside songs that are not his.
In Atlanta's Little Five Points, Joey plays guitar in Harmony Park for tips, carrying the folk songs passed down from his father and grandfather. They are old songs, true songs, songs worn smooth by generations of grief and survival. For Joey, they are also shelter. As long as he plays what came before him, he never has to risk finding out whether anything inside him is strong enough to stand on its own.
But Joey is broke, behind on rent, and running out of ways to call survival a plan.
When a strange woman named Veritas hears the fragment of an original melody he keeps refusing to finish, Joey's carefully defended life begins to unravel. A stolen guitar, a test involving gold and silver, and a legendary old venue called the Landmark pull him into a world where music is sacred, commerce is ruthless, and every door has a price.
At the Landmark, Joey meets Duke, the room's magnetic and calculating owner, who understands that dreams are easier to sell when the lights are right. He also meets Cass, a brilliant singer whose talent is real, even if the system around her is crooked. As Joey fights for a place in the showcase that could change his future, he discovers a secret hidden in his father's past: one original song, buried on Track Seven of an old record.
That discovery changes everything.
To step forward, Joey must stop treating inheritance as a hiding place. He must face the truth about his father, the cost of ambition, the compromises behind every stage, and the song that has been waiting beneath his hands all along.
Set against the heat, grit, and music-soaked streets of Atlanta, Woodsman, Track Seven is a literary novel about fathers and sons, old songs and new wounds, art and survival, and the dangerous grace of finally being heard.
