A young girl searches for her roots in a city torn by racial conflict in this historical melodrama, part of the author’s Chicago trilogy.

Joseph’s novel centers on Pinkie, an 11-year-old girl who looks white enough to stick out like a sore thumb in Chicago’s West Side ghetto in the mid-1960s. She has been brought up there by Jolene Watkins, a Black woman who is not her mother and lets slip that Pinkie’s real name is Rachel Levine. Chaos engulfs Pinkie when policemen rough up neighborhood kids for opening a hydrant on a sweltering summer day, touching off a four-day riot fueled by rage over poverty, racism, and police brutality. Pinkie is taken in by Nizzie Sawhill, a canny Black precinct boss in Chicago’s Democratic Party machine. She also meets Mollie Hinton, a young white reporter covering the riots for the Chicago Associated Press bureau. Pinkie falls in with a sketchy Black reverend and civil rights activist Reverend Jared Levi Bivens, with pedophilic impulses. Nizzie further ratchets up tensions by telling Mollie and other reporters that there is a Black plot to stockpile weapons and start a race war. While chronicling public unrest, Mollie helps Pinkie in her quest to find her real mother. Joseph, who covered the 1966 Chicago riots for the Associated Press, weaves a colorful, gritty tapestry of the city, from the gorgeous Loop skyscrapers, to the dejected North Lawndale slum, to the grungy madhouse of the AP newsroom, with its scurrying copy boys and clacking teletypes. He conveys the city’s seething racial tensions in muscular, evocative prose and pitch-perfect dialogue (“Second night folks got pop-bottle gasoline bombs, what the guy on WVON calls Molotov cocktails. Now there’s less to steal, folks go to setting buildings on fire. Ain’t laughing so much neither. Some got signs Pigs Out! and Get Whitey! and Black Power!…Black Power. Got a good ring to it”). The result is an unforgettable portrait of a city burning with hatred and hope.

A gripping, richly textured saga of the civil rights era.

Joseph offers a sweeping saga highlighting how race and religion shape people’s lives in the second book of his Chicago Trilogy, following To Love Mercy (2006).

It’s 1952, and a project of so-called “Urban Renewal” is in full swing in Bronzeville, Chicago’s predominantly Black neighborhood. With Jim Crow laws still in effect, the government is using the power of eminent domain to destroy the community, forcing families out of their homes. However, the novel’s plot centers mainly on a lost family heirloom—a small silver piece with Hebrew markings. Steve Feinberg, a white Jewish boy from Hyde Park, and Jesse Owens Trimble—a Black youngster from Bronzeville known around the neighborhood as “Sass,” due to his “smart mouth,” as Steve puts it—live very different lives. They’re connected through Mattie, Sass’ mom who works at the ticket counter at the Calumet Theater, which is owned by Mister Nate, Steve’s grandfather. The two leave the theater to search for the “silver thing” after Mister Nate loses it and unjustly accuses Sass of stealing it and they end up traveling all over the city. Later reunited by chance in high school, Steve and Sass’ shared love of jazz has them joining an a cappella group together, eventually leading them into the orbit of alto sax player and notorious gangster Mister Lucky. Intriguingly, the work goes on to explore how Chicago’s 1950s jazz scene served as an extension of the local civil rights movement. Sass’ troublesome older brother, Isaiah, known as “Nubby,” works for Mister Lucky running numbers, bringing trouble into his loved ones’ lives. The richly developed characters, including Dora, an aging Sunday school teacher who works for the Feinbergs as a maid, and Ezell, a boy with a stutter who has a natural ability to defuse conflict, are among the book’s strengths. Throughout the story, Joseph frequently reminds readers how socioeconomic factors influence how people interact with the world. The cast is large and diverse, and their often charming, relatable interactions will draw readers deeply into the story.

A vibrant tale of 1950s Chicago.