The sixth in the author's decade-by-decade exploration of the black experience in America, two of which have won Pulitzer Prizes, Seven Guitars is part bawdy comedy, part dark elegy, and part mystery. In the backyard of a Pittsburgh tenement in 1948, friends gather to mourn for a blues guitarist and singer who died just as his career was on the verge of taking off. The action that follows is a flashback to the busy week leading up to Floyd's sudden and unnatural death.