"One of our greatest living authors."—Lauren LeBlanc, The Boston GlobeMarking a dramatic new direction for Jones, a riveting tale set in the Post WWII South, narrated by a Black soldier who returns to Jim Crow and searches for a mythical idealSet in the early 1950s, this latest 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 true self-educated intellectual and a classic seeker: looking for religion, looking for meaning, looking for 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 with a variety of colorful characters and mythic
