American Blues: A Novel

(Paperback)

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Description

A week after Easter 1973following the lynching of Black church sexton Sam JeffersonLily Vida Wallace is dropped like an immigrant into Greenville, South Carolina. After returning home to Manhattan, Lily continues theological studies in anticipation of the overturn of a centuries-old, males-only priesthood and simultaneously struggles with her erratic engagement. When her fianc flees following discovery of professional impropriety and Atlanta attorney Rodney Davis lands in her path, a new love growsaccelerating Lilys understanding even as it challenges her navet about race.

Some two decades later, high-profile interracial nuptials in Oakland, California, become the occasion for a reunion between the now Reverend Vida and Lucius Clay, the fiery journalist she met in South Carolina. Within weeks of their re-meeting, Lucius is dispatched to cover Black church burningsbeginning with Lilys hometown in Texas.

Writer Hilton Als recently commented: We need to wake up to the fact that America is not one story. It is many, many, many stories. American Blues offers no neat resolution. Instead, its timely story invites, as it tangles with, readers own assumptions and complex experiences of race and gender in America.

Reviews

Hilsabecks prose is vivid and urgent . . .
Kirkus Reviews

The blues are black folks breathing through the grisly legacies of white malevolence and grotesque bloodlust in America. American Blues gives readers a haunting glimpse into the casual and sustained brutality of white supremacy.
Pierce Freelon, writer, composer, and codirector of The History of White People in America

A heartfelt chorus of narrative voices about decades of racial violence in America.
Susan Straight, author of The Gettin PlaceandIn the Country of Women

Author Bio

Polly Hamilton Hilsabeck was in the second wave of women ordained priest in the Episcopal Church in 1985 in the Diocese of Los Angeles. She currently lives with her husband in Durham, North Carolina.