Daniel Black

On his deathbed, a dying black man writes a letter to his estranged, gay son and shares with him the truth that lives in his heart and tries to create a place where the pair can find peace.

A stunning literary debut about coming back home again. Twenty-eight-year-old protagonist Tommy Lee Tyson steps off the Greyhound bus in his hometown of Swamp Creek, Arkansas-a place he left when he was eighteen, vowing never to return. Yet fate and a Ph.D. in black studies force him back to his rural origins as he seeks to understand himself and the black community that produced him. A cold, nonchalant father and an emotionally indifferent mother...

A novel of self-discovery, family bonds and the healing of one small southern town Twelve Gates to the City is the much-anticipated sequel to Black's acclaimed debut, They Tell Me of a Home. In this novel, Sister assumes the voice of the narrator, speaking from the spirit realm, telling her brother TL things he could have never known about their family. She constructs the story as a series of spiritual revelations, exposing to readers both who she...