Those Bones Are Not My Child (Vintage Contemporaries) - Softcover

Bambara, Toni Cade

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0679774084 ISBN 13: 9780679774082

Publisher: Vintage, 2000

Synopsis

This suspenseful novel portrays a community--and a family--under siege, during the shocking string of murders of black children in Atlanta in the early 1980s.

Written over a span of twelve years, and edited by Toni Morrison, who calls Those Bones Are Not My Child the author's magnum opus, Toni Cade Bambara's last novel leaves us with an enduring and revelatory chronicle of an American nightmare.

Having elected its first black mayor in 1980, Atlanta projected an image of political progressiveness and prosperity. But between September 1979 and June 1981, more than forty black children were kidnapped, sexually assaulted, and brutally murdered throughout "The City Too Busy to Hate." Zala Spencer, a mother of three, is barely surviving on the margins of a flourishing economy when she awakens on July 20, 1980 to find her teenage son Sonny missing. As hours turn into days, Zala realizes that Sonny is among the many cases of missing children just beginning to attract national attention. Growing increasingly disillusioned with the authorities, who respond to Sonny's disappearance with cold indifference, Zala and her estranged husband embark on a desperate search. Through the eyes of a family seized by anguish and terror, we watch a city roiling with political, racial, and class tensions.

About this title

Review:

"Riveting. . .a carefully crafted mystery [that is] difficult to put down." -The Boston Globe

"Magnificent. . . . A powerful culmination of Bambara's career." -- The Denver Post

"Luminous and rich in sensory images . . . haunting and surprising. . . . [Bambara] has managed to combine a complex murder mystery, a sophisticated commentary on race relations, and a wonderful tapestry of dozens of memorable characters." --USA Today

"Truly worthy of being called an epic. . . . Anyone who ever thought it does
not take a special kind of courage to write a great novel should read Those Bones Are Not My Child." --Chicago Tribune

From the Back Cover:

'A magnum opus' Toni Morrison

The long-awaited paperback edition of Toni Cade Bambara's posthumous epic uncovering the tragedy of the Atlanta child murders and the hidden depths of a city that spawned them.

In the early 1980's more than forty black children were murdered in Atlanta, they had been strangled, beaten and sexually assaulted. Toni Cade Bambara spent 12 years researching those events and the result is a novel of profound scope and impact.

Those Bones Are Not My Child tells the story of one black family whose son goes missing just as the abductions begin to be reported. As the distraught parents search frantically for their child, the full spectrum of Atlanta's political, social and cultural life is revealed, illuminating the complex issues of race and class bedevilling the city, the 'South' and underpinning America itself.

Toni Cade Bambara wrote two short story collections - Gorilla, My Love and The Sea Birds Are Still Alive; a novel, The Salt Eaters; and a collection of fiction, essays and conversations, Deep Sightings and Rescue Missions. She died in 1995.

'Captures for all time a nightmare of private hate and public racism.' Independent on Sunday

'Bambara has produced both a human drama and a steely report on contemporary society ... admirable.' The Times

'An important and impassioned work which carries the reader forward on a quest for truth and justice.' New Internationalist

'A huge American novel, redolent of our own times, of contemporary torment and determination to saw through and dig out the roots of racist injustice both sides of the Atlantic.' Morning Star

'Bambara's achievement - in this masterly work - is to voice this sense of loss, to give full human dimension to events that for too long many of us flashed by like billboards at highway speed.' New York Times Book Review

About this edition

• Publisher: Vintage
• Publication date: 2000
• ISBN 10: 0679774084
• ISBN 13: 9780679774082
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 688