"Black and Tan Fantasy" is the title of a song written by Duke Ellington and Bubber Miley in 1927. The racial discord through the early 20th Century came to a head by the 1960s. Much like the song, the story alternates between two men-one White, one Black-as they journey through one of the most fraught and disturbing periods of US history, one that remains largely unresolved even sixty years later. The "drowned man" a White man stripped of his place in the strictly segregated society struggles to navigate the surging currents and find a place for himself and his complicated family. The "wounded man" works to bring the power of the vote to the oppressed rural Black population in the Mississippi Delta while struggling to maintain his own dignity and a pledge of nonviolence in the face of atrocities. Truer than many accounts, as only great fiction can be, Black & Tan Fantasy is a tale that strikes a chord that still reverberates today. "Crucial historical novel of American race, identity, and the cost of belonging . . . Luce traverses the haunted terrain of the segregated American South with historical precision, interrogating the complex construction of racial identity and the binary ways-violence and nonviolence-people are driven to pursue justice. As the story progresses to show the enduring impact of racism and denial of identity, readers can expect a weighty read, one that carries a profound message: belonging in a white man's world is neither given nor pure-it is fought for, fractured, and reimagined." -Booklife Review Editor's Pick Born in the baby boom, educated and loosed upon the world, I've tried to make an impression upon it. I got myself a degree in cultural anthropology and did field work in the Mississippi Delta. I saw the first Black man elected in his county since Reconstruction. Later, I worked for private aid organizations that gave medical materials to doctors in hospitals and clinics in developing countries. I saw famine in Africa. I saw bombs fall in Eritrea. There, I met goat herders who would rather starve than eat their goats, and visited hospitals hidden in caves. The doctors fashioned light switches from used syringes. Then I married, and I helped my wife raise two fine boys. Truly, my wife and sons don't know their own righteousness, and that is the one of the best things you can say about anybody. For a while, I worked for a homeless shelter. I taught college students anthropology. Then I worked for a law firm and began to write at night. Now I'm retired. So far, two novels bear my name-Motherless Children and Smokestack Lightning. If I could be British, I'd be Graham Greene. If I could sing, I'd be Bob Dylan. Looking back, I can't say I've made much of an impression, but I'm betting on God's grace. Someday, I hope to be a witness.