In structure, Save Me, Joe Louis is a typical Madison Smartt Bell novel.

Composed of a prologue and four sections, it uses vivid imagery and emotive language to develop motifs of isolation, reunion, flight, and alienation. Just as discordant musical motifs are woven into a unified jazz composition, the disparate characters and themes are brought together in a harmonious dissonance resembling that of new-age music, as Bell develops the plot through glimpses into the psyches of Macrae, Charlie, Porter, and Lacy.

Bell's poetic language and vivid imagery also resemble the individual variations played by jazz soloists.

This highly symbolic novel's overall movement is southward, from New York City to Baltimore to the Nashville suburbs to the swampland of coastal South Carolina. With each section the influence of traditional American society is increasingly weakened, the violence is escalated, and the partnership of the characters is undermined. In "Hell's Kitchen...