In this spellbinding debut, crackling with energy and emotion, Leone Ross weaves an intricate tale of love and deception, violence and hate, honor and self-preservation. Weaving back and forth between New York City in the 1990s and North Carolina in the 1960s, Orange Laughter centers around Tony Pellar, a man of former style and fading beauty who now lives in the subway tunnels beneath New York. Tony is fighting madness at every turn, fleeing a terrifying, ghostly pursuer whom he calls the Soul Snatcher, and convinced his salvation lies in the recovery of buried childhood memories.
As Tony delves into his past, the stories of those people ineluctably entwined with his emerge: of Mikey, Tony's childhood friend, who has created his own equally tenuous escape into the guarded confines of academia; and of Agatha, a complex woman with a disfigured face, a painful past, and a future seemingly bereft of options. All three stories barrel toward each other against the eruptive backdrop of the civil rights movement to a heartrending climax that will, like childhood memories and dark secrets, linger in the minds of readers.
