“Driving The King”by Ravi Howard (Harper, 325 pgs., $25.99)

In “Driving the King,” Ravi Howard tells a thoroughly convincing story about singing star Nat King Cole’s best friend. Both are black men named Nat and were boyhood pals in Montgomery, Alabama, but Nat King Cole owes Nat Weary an extraordinary debt of gratitude. Weary, a soldier newly home after World War II, was present at the Alabama concert where Cole was attacked onstage in the middle of a performance. He bludgeoned the white assailant with a microphone, saved the singer and served 10 years in prison for his trouble.

Weary narrates “Driving the King.” As the title indicates, he has become Cole’s driver — not to mention bodyguard and confidant — after the 10 lost years have passed. The premise of this very fictitious novel is that both Nats are willing to return more than a decade later to Montgomery to finish the hometown concert that was so viciously interrupted.

No one should read this warmly enveloping book looking for authentic history. Cole was actually attacked in Birmingham, not Montgomery. He was rescued by the police, not by a heroic friend. And after that ugly scene, he chose not to perform in the South again and declared himself apolitical, thus angering the NAACP.

But Howard wants to incorporate the courage shown by many others in Montgomery into this book, so he has significantly altered Cole’s real story. “Driving the King” is so enveloping that it’s easy to forget its epigraph: “The art of fiction is an art of make-believe.”

It is so make-believe that it presents Cole as enough of a crusader to turn up during the Montgomery bus boycott, the one for which Rosa Parks is so renowned. Howard has no problem with history here: He names women who were as brave as Parks and showed their courage sooner but did not end up in the national spotlight the way she did.

Nat Weary provides a fine perspective for telling the boycott’s story, since he has barely seen a newspaper (or heard a Nat King Cole megahit) during the 10 years he was jailed. So he sees the battle lines that have been drawn in Montgomery with a compelling mix of wonder, fury and fear.

The book cuts back and forth between the day of the new Montgomery concert and Weary’s memories. The concert has been arranged to sidestep segregation by being announced only at the last minute and staged at a location that traditionally attracts black audiences, not one of the classier downtown places; this book’s Nat Cole wants to play for his own people.

But the hour-by-hour countdown emphasizes the suspense behind trying to pull off even such a seemingly safe plan. Meanwhile, we go back to the first concert, which Weary attended with an engagement ring in his pocket.

He planned to ask a fine, strong girl named Mattie to marry him, but Mattie is part of what he lost on that terrible night. If this sounds hokey, Howard doesn’t write it that way. He captures the genuine sentiment that makes Weary’s loss all the more crushing. And Mattie, as befits the crusading black women of Parks’ time, is taken as seriously as her male counterparts when it comes to selfless dedication. It goes without saying that in her own quiet way she is also a babe.

Nat Weary now lives in Los Angeles, where babes are in no short supply. But going back to Montgomery stirs up volcanic emotions in him, as does driving Nat Cole to the prison where he spent those long, wretched years. But he persuades the star to go there: Years ago, he promised to do this, and his prison buddies thought he was joking.

One of the book’s most memorable scenes has Weary, in such a showy Packard that the guards assume his passenger must be a white man, driving up to the kind of road crew on which Weary once worked. When Weary sees an old friend, he gets Cole to roll down his window. Their cover would be blown if Cole sang anything, but he pitches packs of cigarettes into the weeds, where the guards won’t find them. It’s only a small gesture. But keeping his promise finally sets Nat Weary free.

Other parts of “Driving the King” deal with the real fact that this hugely popular singer (have you ever gotten through Christmas without hearing him croon about chestnuts roasting on an open fire?) could not find a national sponsor for his television show, while his white counterparts easily shilled for car companies. Howard alters the way Cole’s show ended and the attitude he displayed when that happened, but he isn’t really changing anything fundamental here.

Another memorable scene in this book has Cole making a sample TV ad on spec, driving a borrowed convertible down Sunset Boulevard. He picks the car from a movie studio, so he can have any American brand he’d like. But he chooses an Alfa Romeo — because that’s a company that hasn’t turned him down.

It’s a fine idea to have a novel highlight this heartthrob. His life, like his TV show, has been overlooked. Howard’s appealing novel uses Cole more as a device than as a person and keeps him remote much of the time. This is primarily Nat Weary’s story and a look at the dynamic stirrings of the civil rights movement in the mid-1950s; Cole is present mostly to show how irreconcilable fame and color could be. But even this book’s distortions suggest a man whose story remains barely told, while few white singers of his day are without up-to-date biographers. He may not be an ideal role model but he deserves his due.