Two local authors have published new works.
Geoffrey Hindley’s novel Black Dynasty tells the story of African-American life and ambition set in the first 70 years following the civil war.
It is a family saga about a black storekeeper in a remote company town, and how he exploits the business possibilities opened up by a modification in kerosene lamp design which he appropriates from his inventive young black shop assistant to build a multi-million dollar family business.
Peterborough author Mr Hindley worked in London Publishing, then freelance as a writer, lecturer and teacher in the UK, Europe and the US.
As a visiting professor he travelled widely,seeing something of poorer neighbourhoods and riding railroad sleeping cars from Chicago to New York.
He said of the book: “The theme of Black Dynasty is African-American life, and this novel focuses on ambition and achievements in black American families.”
Details of everyday life – artefacts, street scenes, characters, and incidents from the historical record – pitch the reader into the dangerous realities of 1920s South Side Chicago, the horrors of Ku Klux Klan white ‘justice’, and the sometimes dubious politicking of evangelical religion.
The reader is part of the crowd at Mott’s Chicago Pekin Theater, for the running commentary by ticker tape from Reno, Nevada on Black heavyweight Jack Johnson’s championship triumph, cruises the Mississippi by river boat to the seedy nightlife violence of Natchez-under-the-Hill.
Black Dynasty (ISBN: 9781780881959) costs £7.99, and is available from Amazon and other bookstores.
Keith and Elizabeth Stanley-Mallett from Wimblington have released a selection of poetry called Gilded Images – A Masquerade of Verse.
The husband-and-wife team co-operate to crystallise their thoughts, ideas, insights and aspirations into poetic form, on the topics of nature, politics, nostalgia and more.
The book (£7.99 case-bound, £5.99 paperback, ISBN 978-0-7223-4204-6) by Stockwell, for more information go to www.ahstockwell.co.uk.