Motor City Burning
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- $20.99
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- $20.99
Publisher Description
Willie Bledsoe, only in his twenties, is totally burned out. After leaving behind a snug berth at Tuskegee Institute to join the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee in Detroit to try to change the world, Willie quickly grows disenchanted and returns home to Alabama to try to come to grips about his time in the cultural whirlwind. But the surprise return of his Vietnam veteran brother in the spring of 1967 gives him a chance to drive a load of stolen guns back up to the Motor City, which would give him enough money to jump-start his dream of moving to New York. There, on the opening day of the 1968 baseball season—postponed two days in deference to the funeral of Martin Luther King, Jr.—Willie learns some terrifying news: the Detroit police are still investigating the last unsolved murder from the bloody, apocalyptic race riot of the previous summer, and a Detroit cop named Frank Doyle will not rest until the case is solved. And Willie is his prime suspect. Bill Morris' rich and thrilling new novel sets Doyle's hunt against the tumultuous history of one of America's most fascinating cities, as Doyle and Willie struggle with disillusionment, revenge, and forgiveness—and the realization that justice is rarely attainable, and rarely just.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Having focused on 1954 Detroit in his debut, Motor City (1992), Morris eloquently captures the Detroit of 1968, a city shaped by the auto industry, ravaged by violence, and rejuvenated by Motown, in this outstanding crime novel. Disaffected with the civil rights movement, Willie Bledsoe helped his Vietnam veteran brother smuggle a load of weapons to Detroit shortly before the 1967 race riots. Now, as he buses tables at a white country club and struggles to write his memoir, he's haunted by the fear that he killed a woman during the riots. Irish cop Frank Doyle has personal reasons for wanting to solve the murder, but develops a grudging respect for Willie, his chief suspect. Meanwhile, the Tigers' unlikely winning season unites a city searching for optimism amid racial and economic tensions. Morris adeptly evokes time and place, displaying a profound passion for Detroit and astute insight into the era's fraught climate. Characters represent a cross-section of the city's population, adding nuance to this tale of a young black man seeking his voice, a cop pursuing justice, and a country searching for a way forward.