The heartbreaking portrait of a large, rural southern family’s attempt to grapple with their mother’s desperate decision to make her newborn son into the daughter she will never have.

Daniel Black is a native of Kansas City, Kansas, yet spent the majority of his childhood years in Blackwell, Arkansas.

Twenty-eight-year-old protagonist Tommy Lee Tyson steps off the Greyhound bus in his hometown of Swamp Creek, Arkansas-a place he left when he was eighteen, vowing never to return. Yet fate and a Ph.D. in black studies force him back to his rural origins as he seeks to understand himself and the black community that produced him. A cold, nonchalant father and an emotionally indifferent mother make his return, after a ten-year hiatus, practically unbearable, and the discovery of his baby sister’s death and her burial in the backyard almost consumes him. His mother watches his agony when he discovers his sister’s tombstone, but neither she nor other family members is willing to disclose the secret of her death. Only after being prodded incessantly does his older brother, Willie James, relent and provide Tommy Lee with enough knowledge to figure out exactly what happened and why. Meanwhile, Tommy’s seventy-year-old teacher-lying on her deathbed-asks him to remain in Swamp Creek and assume her position as the headmaster of the one-room schoolhouse. He refuses vehemently and she dies having bequeathed him her five . . .

In the summer of 1955, fourteen-year-old Clement enters a General Store in Money, Mississippi to purchase a soda. Unaware of the consequences of flouting the rules governing black-white relations in the South, this Chicago native lays the dime on the counter and turns to depart. Miss Cuthbert, the store attendant, demands that he place the money in her hand, but he refuses and exits with a sense of entitlement unknown to black people at the time. His brutal murder sparks a racial war in Money that forces the black community to galvanize its strength in pursuit of racial equality. Readers won’t forget this poignant story that calls us to explore the best and worst in the human condition. St. Martin’s Press 304 pages Size: 5 1/2 x 8 1/4 $14.95 Trade Paperback Pub Date: 07/2008 ISBN: 0-312-38070- Buy this Book at Powells Buy this Book at Amazon Buy this Book at Barnes & Noble