New Book
From New York Times bestselling author Eric Jerome Dickey—named one of USA Today’s 100 Black Novelists and Fiction Authors You Should Read—comes his final work: an unflinchingly timely novel about history, hearts, and family. It’s the summer of 2019, and Professor Pi Suleman is a Black man from Memphis with a lot to endure—not only as a Black man in Trump’s America but in his hard-earned career as an adjunct professor. Pi is constantly forced to bite his tongue in the face of one of his tenured colleague’s prejudices and microaggressions. At the same time, he’s being blackmailed by a powerful professor who threatens to claim he has assaulted her, when in fact the truth is just the opposite, trapping him in a he-said-she-said with a white woman that, in this society, Pi knows he will never win. When he meets Gemma Buckingham, a sophisticated entrepreneur who has just moved to Memphis from London to escape a deep heartbreak, things begin to look up. Though Gemma and Pi hail from separate cultures, their differences fuel a fiery and passionate connection that just may consume them both. But Pi’s whirlwind romance is interrupted when his absentee father, a celebrated writer, passes away and Pi is called to Los Angeles to both collect his inheritance and learn about the man who never acknowledged him. With the complicated legacy of his famous father to make sense of, Gemma’s visa expiration date looming, and the threats of his colleague becoming increasingly intense, Pi must figure out who he is and what kind of man he will become in his father’s shadow.
About the Author:
Eric Jerome Dickey (1961-2021) was the award-winning and New York Times bestselling author of 29 novels, as well as a six-issue miniseries of graphic novels featuring Storm (X-Men) and the Black Panther. His novel Sister, Sister was honored as one of Essence’s “50 Most Impactful Black Books Of The Last 50 Years”, and A Wanted Woman won the NAACP Image Award in the category of Outstanding Literary Work in 2014. His most recent novels include The Blackbirds, Finding Gideon, Bad Men and Wicked Women, Before We Were Wicked, The Business of Lovers, and The Son of Mr. Suleman.
“Eric Jerome Dickey is the king of writing Black joy. His characters evoke a sense of esteem for self, showing how they might be if white folks just left them alone. If we could just be our happy, sensual, ambitious, free selves we would be modeling one of his characters. However, this book takes on grief, racism, and microaggressions in a big way, too; it’s the first of his works to do so with such detailed intention.”—W Magazine, Delores Williams
“This book is a powerhouse. It is impossible not to become fully absorbed in every scene, the vibrant, dynamic characters drawing you in again and again… All in all, the world through Pi Suleman’s eyes is dark, complex, and endlessly compelling.”—Associated Press
