Praise for Black & White

praise for black & white “Set in Durham, NC, Shiner’s powerful and affecting sixth novel...explores civil rights, race relations and ‘progress’ in that city over the past half century....Shiner weaves Michael’s, Robert’s and Ruth’s stories into a stunning tapestry that captures the hopes, dreams, greed, bigotry, ambitions and betrayals that shaped their destinies and those of our country.” —Publishers Weekly “Lewis Shiner’s latest, Black & White, is killer. Strong charac- ters, suspenseful situations, and tremendous insight. A novel that doesn’t flinch from social issues, and is so gracefully written it makes you want to weep. Should not be missed. Lewis Shiner is the real deal, and this is his finest work.” — Joe R. Lansdale, author of The Bottoms “Shiner, with exhaustive research, uses the story of Hayti and urban renewal as the setting for a compelling novel that is part detective story, part novel of psychological discovery, and, most important, a story about the complex relationships that African-Americans and white people share.” —Cliff Bellamy inThe Durham Herald-Sun “A near-perfect novel—steeped in important political and societal issues, neatly wrapped in the trimmings of a mystery story. With Black & White, Lewis Shiner ascends to a literary realm previously reserved for the likes of Michael Chabon and Jonathan Lethem.” —Rick Klaw in The Austin Chronicle “Black & White, Lewis Shiner’s long-awaited return to the novel, is social realism so urgent and committed as to be an act of witnessing. Like books by Richard Price and George Pelecanos, Shiner’s is both a page-turner and an urban docu- mentary with a big, fierce heart.” —Jonathan Lethem, author of Motherless Brooklyn “There are secrets upon secrets in Black & White, sins upon sins, but they all revolve around a single, penetrating absence: Hayti, the African-American community gutted by the construction of the Durham Freeway 40 years ago....Secrets that could never be given voice are at last revealed: violence, sex, corruption and murder, sure, but also the simple, all- too-human cowardice that ruins lives. Black & White reveals itself through these flashback passages as a generational story that is by turns both Shakespearean and quintessentially Faulknerian.” — Gerry Canavan in The Independent Weekly “Working quietly on a string of brilliant books, Lew Shiner has proven himself as one of America’s best novelists....[Black & White] contains layers of mystery, not the least of which is Michael’s secret origin, but it’s not quite a mystery novel. Vodou is an important part of the plot, but it’s not a super- natural novel. It’s a book about race in America, but it’s not a sociological novel. It’s all of those at once, and a love story, and a family saga—in other words, it’s simply a beautifully written novel, full of tension and action and genuine human emotion.” —Jeff Mariotte, Mysterious Galaxy Bookstore “Black & White is a page-turner about a thirtysomething comics artist who returns to North Carolina in 2004 and hears a deathbed confession from his father that plunges him into the past—of a vital, successful black community outside of Durham that’s razed for a freeway—and an unexpected present. It’s a masterful portrayal of a post-racial South fighting to be born, and a thoughtful meditation on how personal change effects social change and vice-versa.” —Ed Ward in Paste On Best of the Year lists from: The Los Angeles Times The Durham Herald-Sun black & white also by lewis shiner novels Say Goodbye (1999) Glimpses (1993) Slam (1990) Deserted Cities of the Heart (1988) Frontera (1984) collections Love in Vain (2001) The Edges of Things (1991) Nine Hard Questions about the Nature of the Universe (1990) black white& a novel by lewis shiner subterranean press © 2008 by Lewis Shiner Portions of this book have been previously published, in somewhat different form, as follows: “Renewal” inSouthwest Review, “Wonderland” in Black Clock, and “Ceremony” in Subterranean. Interior design by Lewis Shiner Set in Bembo Author photo © 2008 by Orla Swift All other photos and cover design by Lewis Shiner isbn 978-1-59606-302-0 Subterranean Press PO Box 190106 Burton, MI 48519 www.subterraneanpress.com www.lewisshiner.com For Orlita m i c h a e l 2004 Monday, October 18 e looked at the angry red 5:05 on his travel alarm and knew he Hwould not get back to sleep. He swung his legs off the foldout bed and walked five steps to the tiny kitchenette. He was still dressed in last night’s jeans and gray T-shirt, his mouth stale from recycled hotel air. He brushed his teeth and washed his face in the sink, combing wet fingers through his hair. Go, he thought. His suitcase was packed, as it had been for most of the last month. The only hanging space—as well as the only bathroom and the only exit—was in the bedroom where his mother slept in a tranquilized haze. The rest of his belongings lined up next to the suitcase: a small drawing board, a FedEx box, and two plastic Harris-Teeter grocery sacks. He put on his glasses and shoes and added the clock and shaving kit to the suitcase. He was able to roll the suitcase with his right hand and carry every- thing else in his left. He stopped by the door to the hall. His mother’s snoring suspended mo- mentarily as he took his jacket off a hanger and slipped into it. She was in the farther of the twin beds, near the window. The other would have held his father, except that his father was across the street in the Durham va Medical Center, dying of lung cancer. Michael was 35, too old, he thought, to spend this much time with his parents, no matter what the circumstances. From the lobby he called a cab and picked, more or less at random, another faceless suite hotel out of the phone book. The new one was just off I-40 at the eastern edge of Durham, where the city proper blended into Research Triangle Park. During the tech boom rtp had been the Silicon Valley of the East Coast, pumping millions into the North Carolina economy. When the bubble burst with the new century, it left behind inflated housing costs, thousands of overqualified, unemployed tech workers, and an abundance of empty hotel rooms. 1 2 lewis shiner The dispatcher told him it would be half an hour. Michael left his belongings with the desk clerk, a heavyset woman with meticulous cornrows. “If my cab comes, tell him to wait for me,” Michael said. “I’ll be back in a few minutes.” “All right now, hon.” He crossed the street to the hospital and took the elevator to the sixth floor. The charge nurse was at the station and managed a tired smile. “He had a good night,” she said. “Some coughing, but he slept.” “That’s something, I guess.” “He’ll be sleeping more and more,” she said. “It’s like they make the transi- tion kind of gradual, a little less hold on this world every day.” Michael stood in the hallway and watched his father sleep. He had faint wisps of white hair that had grown back since the initial chemo fallout, and his skin had turned a nicotine-stain yellow from jaundice. His thin forearms protruded from red va pajamas, the left hooked to a morphine infusion pump. An oxygen cannula ran under his nose. As Michael watched, his father coughed wetly, cleared his throat, and shifted his head, all without seeming to regain consciousness. After he turned 30, Michael had gone through a period of seeing his father’s face in his own when he looked in the mirror, especially first thing in the morning, when he was still puffy with sleep. That was a different face than his father had now. Now his father’s face was crumpled like a used towel. When his eyes were open they were bloodshot, restless, and haunted. It had all happened with terrifying speed. One day his father had seemed all right; the next he had coughed up a huge mouthful of blood. In retrospect he’d been tired and had lost some weight, but there’d been nothing to prepare him for what the doctors found. It was “everywhere,” his mother told Michael on the phone, nearly hysterical. This had been back in Dallas. Michael had flown up from Austin to do what he could. Tests had revealed small cell lung cancer, already in both lungs and metastasized to the lymph nodes, too far gone for surgery and not within what the doctors called “one radiation port.” He’d had a round of chemotherapy and then, inexplicably, insisted on com- ing to the va hospital in Durham for what everyone understood would be his final weeks. Logic was clearly not the issue. There was a huge va hospital in San Anto- nio, and one of the world’s finest cancer centers, M.D. Anderson, in Houston. But North Carolina was where he and Michael’s mother had met and married, where he’d begun his career in the construction business, where Michael had been born. And it was apparently where he had determined to die. “Take care of him,” Michael said to the charge nurse, and went back to the Brookwood Inn. Black & White 3 • His cab driver had a heavy accent and was playing a cassette with jangly guitars and hand drums. “What part of Africa are you from?” Michael asked.

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