Great Black Hope

(Hardback)

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A beautifully expansive novel about race and class... Franklin's emotional and intellectual range is vast.... An exceptional debut' - Katie Kitamura, author ofIntimacies

An arrest for cocaine possession in the Hamptons on the last day of a sweltering summer leaves Smith, a young Black Queer graduate, in a state of turmoil. Pulled into the court system and mandated treatment, he finds himself in an absurd but dangerous situation: his class protects him but his race does not. It is just weeks after the death of his beloved roommate Elle, a glamorous member of the Black elite, and he is still reeling from the tabloid spectacle - as well as the lingering question of how well he really knew his closest friend and what happened to her the night she
died.

When he flees to his hometown of Atlanta and generations of his family of doctors and college presidents and lawyers - the weight of expectations haunts him. ThenCarolyn, the closest friend he has left, goes off the rails, Smith returns to New York only to lose himself in his old life, drawn back into the city's underworld. Will his search for the truth about Elle cost him his freedom and his future

Smith goes on a dizzying journey through the New York City nightlife circuit, anonymous recovery rooms, Atlanta's Black society set, police investigations and courtroom dramas, and a circle of friends coming of age in a new era. Great Black Hope is a propulsive, glittering story about what it means to exist between worlds, to be upwardly mobile yet spiralling downward and how to find a way back to hope.

Author Bio

Born and raised in Atlanta, Rob Franklin is a writer of fiction and poetry, and a cofounder of Art for Black Lives. A Kimbilio Fiction Fellow and finalist for the New England Review Emerging Writer prize, he has published work in New England Review, Prairie Schooner, and The Rumpus among others. Franklin lives in Brooklyn, New York and teaches writing at the School of Visual Arts. Great Black Hope is his first novel.