Cedric the Entertainer’s bootlegger grandfather inspired his novel

nypost.com:

“Flipping Boxcars,” out Sept. 12 (Amistad/HarperCollins), tells the story of Floyd “Babe” Boyce, a bootlegger in Carruthersville, Mo. (Cedric’s hometown) and unfolds over July 4th weekend in 1948.“Babe is my [maternal] grandfather and these would be stories that I would hear, my mother and her brothers talking about him or somebody telling the story of his personality and some of the things he had done,” said Cedric, who stars in “The Neighborhood” on CBS and who wrote the book with Alan Eisenstock. “[Babe] had passed before I was born but I would still have these very clear images of him, sometimes in my adult life, of things he would say to me and what he would be wearing at the time — and it was really weird.“I tried to think of our connection to our family, our lineage and sometimes how people would say, ‘You walk just like your uncle … you have the same cadence or the way you say a word,'” said Cedric, 59 (born Cedric Kyles). “And I started thinking about that connection and about how to write a story about someone that I feel I know — but who I’ve never met.“And that’s where the fiction part comes in.”As the novel progresses, readers are transported into Babe’s world and meet his partner in crime, Karter (they served together in World War II).

Together, they make a deal with Chicago crime syndicate boss Tommy Wojak and need to raise $54,000 to buy 3,000 cases of untaxed bourbon arriving by railroad from Canada.Things go awry after Babe, who can read cards, loses big at the craps table and, in an effort to save his marriage and his family, tries to pull off a train robbery with unexpected results.Cedric said he and Eisenstock collaborated on the novel by talking several times a week.“I had a lot of little notes and.