Chris Coltrane is a successful businessman, and an alcoholic whose life has collided – sometimes disastrously – with many people. A failed intervention by his company’s board led Chris to storm off and find solace in Dimitri T’s, a neat but struggling little cocktail bar in the Cape Town suburb of Oaksworth.
Julie Ross, the owner of Dimitri T’s, is doing her damnedest to crawl out from under her father’s problematic legacy. She gambles her last hope on a Christmas lunch special and happy hour trying to rake in some money before the rent becomes due in a week, and she is left without a business.
Through the soundtrack of songs played on the jukebox, the intertwined backstories of Julie and six of her broken barroom heroes are revealed before the night ends unexpectedly, changing their lives forever.
“The Last Jukebox Heroes” is a character-driven literary fiction novel infused with music that explores human connections, the influence people have on those around them and the power the past has on the present. It’s a story of choices and the flawed nature of humans.
The Last Jukebox Heroes by Stefan Schutte
Stefan Schutte works as an accountant in the financial industry and has resided in Cape Town for the past 23 years. Although he often wrote informally and has received some accolades along the way, Stefan’s journey as a fiction writer only began in 2018 when he attended a meeting of the West Coast Writers' Circle while working on a non-fiction book. At roughly the same time he was also reading Steven Pressfield’s book on The War of Art when he realised it was time to make a commitment, put in the work, and take writing more seriously.
Inspired by a broken man he had observed in a bar, Stefan developed a short story titled The Patron, which received recognition and became the foundation for the main character in The Last Jukebox Heroes. The book was largely influenced by the sights and sounds of everyday life. According to Stefan, music and experiences would often move him in some way and conjure up certain thoughts that eventually found their way into the book. Sometimes it would be a song, other times a guy sitting in a bar, or even a homeless person with an unusual cardboard sign standing by the traffic light.
Stefan's literary work showcases hard-hitting narrative writing mixed with a good dose of subjectivity and an inescapable soundtrack of jukebox classics.
