A Love Song for Ricki Wilde

Ezra Vaughn Percival Walker is the second protagonist of the novel and Ricki’s love interest. He’s described as having a “towering frame and intense, blazing eyes [that] could turn the coldest stoic to mush” (111).

Born in 1900 to a family of musically inclined sharecroppers in South Carolina, Ezra became a talented pianist. His ease at the piano earned him nickname “Breeze.” Ezra spent his childhood desperate to escape the limits of his small southern town. When drafted to join the all-Black Ninety-Third Infantry Division stationed in France in 1917 during World War I, Ezra learned that racism was less prevalent in Europe, where he appreciated the reprieve from the senseless, exhausting racism of white Americans. After the war, Ezra returned home only to discover racist violence in the US was worse than ever: The Red Summer of 1919 resulted in the deaths of his entire family, who burned to death in a church fire set by the Ku Klux Klan.

At 23, Ezra moved to Harlem to pursue a better life as a musician. Soon after finding success, however, Ezra was cursed by his voodoo-practicing girlfriend, Felice, for not marrying her. Destined to live as a 28-year-old immortal whose true love will die on Leap Day, Ezra avoids the joys of life—including love and piano-playing—as penance. He buries his pain “so deep, he’d forget where to find it” (128). After a century of hiding by being a quickly forgotten muse for the world’s most talented musicians, Ezra finally encounters the woman whose death Felice predicted—Ricki. Overcoming his fears of forming a relationship, Ezra connects deeply with Ricki, with whom he has a preternatural bond. Accepting their fate as doomed star-crossed lovers, the two develop a meaningful if short-lived romance until a last-minute reprieve saves Ricki from her fate. In the end, Ezra renounces his aloof existence, commits to a life with Ricki, gains closure with Felice, grieves for the tragic loss of his family, and rediscovers his love for piano.

Adelaide “Della” Bennett is a 96-year-old woman who lives above Wilde Things in Harlem and becomes Ricki’s chosen grandmother of sorts; Della’s role is that of a mentor and wise sage who offers Ricki guidance on life and love while also keeping her safety in mind. Della is introduced as “an elderly woman, dazzling in a linen caftan, oversized white-framed sunglasses, and a tiny silver ‘fro” (19-20) with twisted and trembling arthritic hands and a subtle stoop. She has a personal driver and a clipped voice with a near-British inflection “adopted by upper-crust Southern Black women of a certain age to indicate class” (20). As someone who’s never had any connection with grandmothers or great-aunts, Ricki eagerly accepts such a connection with Della. Upon first meeting, Ricki knows “with certainty, that she’d randomly met her real-life fairy godmother and that she’d felt as dazed and dazzled as if she’d been touched by a magic wand” (23). Ricki soon becomes family to Della, who treats her with warmth, protectiveness, and a pinch of bossiness. Ricki adds vitality to Della’s final days, ensuring her motto of leaving with no regrets is fulfilled by the time she passes away.

Della’s husband, Dr. Eustace Bennett, dies just before the start of the novel. She views this as ironic—he was a neurologist who studied narcolepsy who dies in his sleep. Her love for Eustace is an example of The Transcendence of Art and Love to Ricki, who is fascinated with Della’s passionate defense of the pursuit of love as one of the highest human ambitions—an ethos that both prompts Ricki into action and meta-fictionally justifies the focus of romance novels like this one.

Della is also the daughter of Felice Fabienne, the woman who cursed Ezra in the 1920s. Della keeps secret this fact and her lung cancer diagnosis for most of the novel, only for the truth to be revealed in the climactic final chapters; after making peace with the memory of the mother who abandoned her and died by suicide, Della decides to sacrifice her life for Ricki’s to undo Felice’s curse.