Set on the campus of a small black college, this novel explores the theme of racial tension and the possibilities and perils of a black revolution. From the author of NIGHT STUDIES and THE BEACH UMBRELLA.
--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
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Book Description
Editorial Reviews
From Publishers Weekly
Colter takes on a formidable task with this novel. He unveils his denouement in the first chaptera "highly agitated, confused, country black boy" nicknamed Cager will kill a "highborn old white woman," then takes several hundred pages of admittedly "verbose" narration by Cager's friend, a preacher named Meshach Barry, to arrive at the murder. He shifts scenes almost compulsively, from a poor, rural black community to an upwardly mobile black university in a small Tennessee town, from a blues nightclub to a prison for white-collar criminals (Meshach serves time for "mishandling" federal educational funds.) With his vivid characterizations and eye for detail, Colter creates an engrossing, disturbing and enlightening fiction about black power and powerlessness. In his plot and his psychological insights, he purposely echoes Wright's Native Son, Ellison's Invisible Man and Dostoyevski's Crime and Punishment. But this ambitious work falls short on several counts: at times the narrative plods, the numerous characters and scene changes are distracting, and the story of Meshach Barry, presented as a subplot, pales beside the passionate tale of Cager. Colter (The Beach Umbrella), an emeritus professor at Northwestern University, is an attorney. Portions of this novel were previously published in TriQuarterly.
Copyright 1988 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
Copyright 1988 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
From Library Journal
Dealing out episodes "like a poker hand," this novel is the confession of former preacher Meshach Barry and canonization of "Cager" Lee, the unrivaled student he meets at a black Tennessee college in the 1940s. In "a pastiche or potpourri of ever-escalating incidents" that include a religious snake handling, the idealistic Cager builds a small paramilitary force guided by a twisted vision of redemption. Colter's ambitious if verbose novel reveals even in its most innocuous of moments the true battles of a chocolate soldier: Cager alighting from train which, because he's black, slows but never quite stops, or observing German POW's waiting in a cafeteria he can't enter. Peter Bricklebank, City Coll., CUNY
Copyright 1988 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
Copyright 1988 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
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