American Blues

A week after Easter 1973-following the lynching of Black church sexton Sam Jefferson-Lily 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 fiance flees following discovery of professional impropriety and Atlanta attorney Rodney Davis lands in her path, a new love grows-accelerating Lily's understanding even as it challenges her naivete 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 burnings beginning with Lily's hometown in Texas. Writer Hilton Als recently commented: "e;We need to wake up to the fact that America is not one story. It is many, many, many stories."e; 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.