Shadow of Light

By James E. Cherry

"Like the work of Richard Wright, Shadow of Light is in the tradition of black novels that become unforgettable."--Jerry W. Ward, Jr. Black cop. White town. Deep South. The festering racial tensions in a Tennessee backwater town come to a boil after a black grandmother is raped and shot by a gang of white teenagers. Only one man has the capacity to keep a lid on the mounting violence and that's the town's senior black cop, Walter Robinson. A two-fisted portrayal of the South today--riven by poverty, drugs, and racism, but still struggling toward a better future. James E. Cherry is a new African American voice. Shadow of Light is his first novel.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 1852424923
• ISBN13: 9781852424923
• Release Date: June 2008
• Publisher: Serpent's Tail
• Length: 224 Pages
• Weight: 0.35 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.5" x 5.0" x 8.0"

Customer Reviews

strong thriller

Forrest looks like a typical small Southern town; however, below the surface in the Tennessee town, racial tension waits for the incident to explode. One night after planning and casing a house where a respected black woman lives, white males burst in to rob it. They expected the elderly female "Black Mama" to be at church as she always is, but instead she was home. The leader of the invaders Ronny Solomon rapes her before shooting her. Miraculously she lives and her livid grandson police detective Walter Robinson wants to know how close his peers are o catching the culprits. All local blacks decry the crime, but Walter's nephew neighborhood druglord Cebo wants white blood to flow especially those who committed the obscenity. He informs the police that if the SOBs are not in custody within forty-eight hours a cop will die; another will die every forty-eight hours afterward until there are no police or the perps are caught. The town is a powder keg with only Walter able to keep the fuse from igniting, but he sympathizes with his nephew as this is his beloved grandma. It does not take a lot of words to describe the town where blacks see no way out of poverty that engulfs communities. In some way James E. Cherry's vivid description of a town without pity feels somewhat 1960s yet the author makes the case that poverty is the modern day de facto racism. Walter is a good person and cop as he tries to glide above the racial divide even as he understands how many whites look down at blacks; he vents his frustration on his wife. However this time he cannot ignore the incident nor does he truly want too. How he acts will determine whether this town burns down in a Forrest fire or not as James E. Cherry provides a strong thriller that plays out on two levels: town-wide and character poignancy. Harriet Klausner