Walk Like A Natural Man-Signed and Inscribed

Walk Like A Natural Man, set in the 1930s, is about good-hearted eighteen year-old Ocotton-picker Skip ReynoldsO dreams of being the Obronze Errol Flynn, O and his journey to Hollywood after responding to a newspaper advertising OEzekiel WashingtonOs

Skip Reynolds, an 18-year-old sharecropper in rural Texas, is star-struck after reading an advertisement from an L.A. acting school promising stardom for aspiring black actors. He leaves his grandmother and hitchhikes to L.A. with his National steel guitar. After suffering the disappointment of learning that the acting school is a scam, Skip settles into a job as a dishwasher and--with the help and hindrance of new friends--begins the adjustment to urban life in the late 1930s, which puts severe limitations on the ambitions of nonwhites but does not contain the dirt poverty and overt mistreatment of the Jim Crow South. His dreams of being the "bronze Errol Flynn" and improving on the Hollywood image of blacks are sorely tested by the compromises of Hollywood in the 1930s, when the most prominent black actor was Steppin Fetchit. How far will he go to realize his dream? Thompson's novel incorporates the fascinating history of Hollywood and the early struggle of aspiring black actors. Vanessa Bush
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