Description
Marking a dramatic new direction for Jones, a riveting tale set in the post–World War II South, narrated by a Black soldier who returns to Jim Crow and searches for a mythical ideal.
Set in the early 1950s, this novel from Pulitzer Prize and National Book Award finalist Gayl Jones follows the witty but perplexing army veteran Buddy Ray Guy as he embodies the fate of Black soldiers who return, not in glory, but into their Jim Crow communities.
A cook and tractor repairman, Buddy was known as Budweiser to his army pals because he’s a wise guy. But underneath that surface, he is a self-educated intellectual and a classic searching for religion, meaning, and love.
As he moves around the South, from his hometown of Lexington, Kentucky, primarily, to his second home of Memphis, Tennessee, he recalls his love affairs in post-war France and encounters a variety of colorful characters and mythical circus barkers, topiary trimmers, landladies who provide shelter and plenty of advice for their all-Black clientele, proto-feminists, and bigots. The lead among these characters is, of course, the Unicorn Woman, who exists but mostly lives in Bud’s private mythology.
Jones offers a rich, intriguing exploration of Black (and Indigenous) people in a time and place of frustration, disappointment, and spiritual hope.