Lorraine Toussaint

In spite of remarkable differences, Eric and Tommy are as close as brothers. Eric, a Nordic Adonis, is graced by a seemingly endless supply of good fortune. Tommy is a lame black boy, cursed with health problems, yet he remains optimistic and strong.After tragedy rips their makeshift family apart, the lives of these boys diverge astonishingly: Eric, the golden youth, is given everything but trusts nothing; Tommy, motherless and impoverished, has nothing,...

It's l968 in America. Change is blowing in the wind, but seemingly far removed from the unrest in the cities is the small town of Mill Valley where for generations, the shadow of the Bellows family has loomed large. It is in their mansion on the edge of town that Sarah, a young girl with horrible secrets, turned her tortured life into a series of scary stories, written in a book that has transcended time.

In "Long black song," a hard-working farmer invests what little he has in a gift for his wife, while back home, she falls for the advances of a traveling salesman. A small-town principal risks his career to defend a young boy's image of a black Christ painted for a state-wide competition in "The boy who painted Christ black." A jazz-joint piano player in "The Reunion" comes to terms with prejudices that have haunted her since childhood, when she is...