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In these fourteen stories, the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of The Known World explores the complexities of Black American lives in the nationâs capital. Returning to the city that inspired his first prizewinning book, Lost in the City, bestselling author Edward P. Jones has filled this collection with people who call Washington, D.C., home. Yet it is not the cityâs power brokers that most concern him but rather its ordinary citizens. All Aunt Hagarâs Childrenâfeaturing five stories previously published in The New Yorkerâturns an unflinching eye to the men, women, and children caught between the old ways of the South and the temptations that await them further north, people who in Jonesâs masterful hands, emerge as fully human and morally complex, whether they are country folk used to getting up with the chickens or people with centuries of education behind them. In the title story, in which Jones employs the first-person rhythms of a classic detective story, a Korean War veteran investigates the death of a family friend whose sorry destiny seems inextricable from his motherâs own violent Southern childhood. In âIn the Blink of Godâs Eyeâ and âTapestryâ, newly married couples leave behind the familiarity of rural life to pursue lives of urban promise only to be challenged and disappointed. With the legacy of slavery just a stoneâs throw away and the future uncertain, Jonesâs cornucopia of characters will haunt readers for years to come. |
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