Lewis Shiner

Race, family and voodoo in North Carolina

This is the first novel in nine years from Shiner, who has penned two of the best popular-music novels I’ve read (Glimpses and Say Goodbye). 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 affects social change, and vice-versa.

When the dynamite comes out and the race riot starts—you will be turning those pages.