TO LOVE MERCY:
A Novel by Frank S. Joseph.
ISBN: 0-9744785-3-9
Look at me g-g-guys, I can do it too. Hey you guys really, look at
me, watch me. All right, now you’re really going to get it you j-j-jigaboo!
But he misses. Ned and Duane punch him and kid him. They’re all
laughing now, reaching in their pants for more quarters.
Come on, you try it too. Dunk the nigger!
The boys’ newfound freedom contrasts sharply with the constraints of the novel’s adult characters, both black and white, whose fear makes them as ready to attack one another as they are to expect attacks. The boys’ families know that Steve and Sass are together, a fact that upsets them as much as the fact that the boys are lost. Racial tension reaches the boiling point when the families meet in a storefront church in Bronzeville, and personal choices are weighed with a shattering clarity against the pressures of the city.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Frank Joseph cut his teeth as a writer at the famous training-ground City News Bureau of Chicago. He worked at The Associated Press, covering the Democratic National Convention street disorders, the Detroit riot, Dr. Martin Luther King’s march into Cicero IL, and just about every ghetto uprising and incident of urban violence that defined the turbulent mid-‘60s in Chicago. Joseph was an editor with The Washington Post during the Watergate years. In 1982, he founded Key Communications Group Inc. , a specialized-information publishing company. He and his wife, Carol Jason, a sculptor and artist, met in Chicago and now live in Chevy Chase MD; they are the parents of Shawn and Sam.
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