Leaving Atlanta - Hardcover

Jones, Tayari

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0446528307 ISBN 13: 9780446528306

Publisher: Warner Books, 2002

Synopsis

A tale based on the Atlanta child murders of 1979 finds Tasha coping with her parents' separation in the wake of a first crush Rodney struggling to make friends while vying for his abusive father's approval, and Octavia facing down the in crowd at school. A first novel. 40,000 first printing.

About this title

About the Author:

Tayari Jones is the author of four novels, including Silver Sparrow, The Untelling, Leaving Atlanta, and An American Marriage. She holds degrees from Spelman College, Arizona State University, and the University of Iowa. An Associate Professor in the MFA program at Rutgers-Newark University, she is spending the 2017-18 academic year as the Shearing Fellow for Distinguished Writers at the Beverly Rogers, Carol C. Harter Black Mountain Institute at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas. She blogs on writing at TayariJones.com/blog, and she lives in Brooklyn.

From Publishers Weekly:

Based on the Atlanta child murders of 1979-1980, this wrenching debut novel is told from the perspective of three Atlanta fifth-graders living in the midst of the crisis. Tasha is a sweet, conflicted middle-class girl navigating the harsh social waters of her school. Rodney, "the weirdest boy in class," is an unpopular kid who feels both pushed and ignored by his perfectionist parents. Octavia is a whip-smart, confident social outcast who carefully notes that she lives "across the street" from the projects. Jones, who was a child herself in Atlanta in the late '70s and early '80s, weaves her tale with consummate ease, shifting from third to second to first person as she switches narrators. The details of the children's everyday life playground fights, school cafeteria breakfasts, candy store visits are convincingly presented and provide an emotional context for the murders. When classmates begin disappearing, we know that they, along with their peers, are not one-dimensional innocents. One night when Octavia sneaks a late-night look at the local news, she sees a now-missing classmate flash on the screen. "In the picture he looked like a regular boy from our class. He was by himself so you couldn't tell that he was shorter than most of them and just nicer and smarter than all of them put together. Kodak commercials say that a picture is worth a thousand words, but the one they showed of Rodney ain't worth more than three or four. Boy. Black. Dead." This strongly grounded tale hums with the rhythms of schoolyard life and proves Jones to be a powerful storyteller.
Copyright 2002 Cahners Business Information, Inc.

About this edition

• Publisher: Warner Books
• Publication date: 2002
• ISBN 10: 0446528307
• ISBN 13: 9780446528306
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 272