It's Here! The Long-Awaited Third Novel: "Perfect Peace"

"Daniel Black writes of growing up in a small town with humor, grace and forgiveness. Perfect Peace is a wonderful story filled with richly drawn characters who negotiate their complex relationships with passion and clarity. Daniel Black is a total original."

Adriana Trigiani, bestselling author of Very Valentine

Daniel Black understands the racial psychology and culture of the South so well that he can show, not tell, and his characters’ actions always ring true. This novel is a powerful exploration of a small group of individuals who hold each other in high regard. The love among members of this family is severely challenged, but the challenge is triumphantly met. Each child grows to manhood and achieves success according to his gifts. Through their lives we experience disappointment and sorrow, but also fulfillment and joy. Perfect Peace is an intense and satisfying read.

Greg Iles, New York Times-bestselling author of The Devil's Punchbowl

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     Twenty-eight-year-old protagonist Tommy Lee Tyson steps off the Greyhound bus in his hometown of Swamp Creek, Arkansas -- a place he left when he was eighteen, vowing never to return. Yet fate and a Ph.D. in black studies force him back to his rural origins as he seeks to understand himself and the community that made him. A cold, nonchalant father and an emotionally indifferent mother make his return, after a ten-year hiatus, practically unbearable, and the discovery of his baby sister's death and her burial in the backyard almost consumes him. His mother watches his agony when he discovers his sister's tombstone, but neither she nor other family members is willing to disclose the secret of her death. Only after prodded incessantly does his older brother, Willie James, relent and provide Tommy Lee with enough knowledge to figure out exactly what happened and why.
     Meanwhile, Tommy's seventy-year-old teacher -- lying on her deathbed -- asks him to remain to Swamp Creek and assume her position as the headmaster of the one-room schoolhouse. He refuses vehemently and she dies having bequeathed him her five thousand-book collection in the hopes that he will change his mind.
     Over the course of a one-week visit, riddled with tension, heartache, and revelation, Tommy Lee Tyson discovers truth about his family, his community, and his undeniable connection to rural Southern black folk and their ways.

     In the summer of 1955, fourteen-year-old Clement enters a general store in Money, Mississippi, to purchase a soda. Unaware of the consequences of flouting the rules governing black-white relations in the South, this Chicago native defies tradition by laying a dime on the counter and turns to depart. Miss Cuthbert, the store attendant, demands that he place the money in her hand, but refuses, declaring, "I ain't no slave!" and exits with a sense of entitlement unknown to black people at the time. His behavior results in his brutal murder. This event sparks a war in Money, forcing the black community to galvanize its strength in pursuit of equality.

"The Sacred Place, Daniel Omotosho Black's latest novel, reminds us that agency requires struggle and surrender. It carries a heavy price for nearly all who seek its rewards.... The writing is splendidly mature. It ranks among our best new storytelling. In these pages we can rediscover how to be patient with the Universe and its seeming axiom: Freedom costs!"

Jeffrey Lynn Woodyard, Ph.D., independent scholar and researcher

Copyright © 2008 Daniel Black.