National Network for Equitable Library Service

On her seventeenth birthday in 1973, Janice Hunter met Marvin Gaye- the soulful prince of Motown with the seductive liquid voice whose chart-topping, socially conscious album What's Going On made him a superstar two years earlier. Despite a sixteen-year-age difference and Marvin's marriage to the sister of Berry Gordy, Motown's founder, the star-struck teenager and the emotionally volatile singer began a scorching relationship. One moment Jan was studying high school history; the next she was accompanying Marvin to parties with other pop stars, lounging with Don Cornelius on the set of Soul Train, and helping to discover new talent like Frankie Beverly. But the distractions and burdens of fame, the chaos of dysfunctional families, and the irresistible temptations of drugs overshadowed the love they shared and their marriage disintegrated. Silent since Marvin's tragic death in 1984, Jan at last opens up, sharing the moving, erotically charged story of one of music history's most fabled marriages. Unsparing in its honesty and insight, illustrated with sixteen pages of color and black-and-white photos, After the Dance reveals what it's like to ride shotgun on a wave of fame and self-destruction with a tortured genius who helped transform popular culture and whose artistry continues to be celebrated today.