Cinder

Description

The outstanding follow-up to Albert French's Billy (which Time magazine said 'may be the best first novel by a black author since Toni Morrison's The Bluest Eye in 1969'), Cinder is a tale of racial division in Mississippi, leading up to and during WWII. In the small Mississippi town of Banes in 1938, time passes slowly and the town's inhabitants follow the same daily rhythm as they have done for years. The streets are hot and dusty and the old people watch the world go by from their porches. But Banes is a town torn apart by tragedy, divided by racial prejudice and haunted by the tale of Billy-Lee Turner, a ten-year-old boy executed for the murder of a white girl. Spanning four years, this sequel to Albert French's outstanding novel Billy focuses on his mother, Cinder, a woman whose beauty has always set her apart. It is a powerful story of heartbreak, community, history, and the ties that bind.

Albert French served four years in the Marines as an infantryman. After the service, he taught himself photography and worked as a medical photographer and staff journalist for the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette. In 1981 he created Pittsburgh Preview Magazine, which he published until 1988. He has written several novels, including Holly, I Can't Wait on God and a memoir, Patches of Fire.

Comparable to the groundbreaking work of Toni Morrison, Cinder is a valuable addition to the chronicle of African American literature and is destined to become a literary classic * Big Issue * Anyone who has read the fiction of William Faulkner will be familiar with this world... French is a poet at heart...there are moments of astonishing vividness throughout * Guardian * The idiom of his characters is rhythmic, expressive, ultimately poetic, and brings William Faulkner to mind * Independent *