Great Spring/Summer Read: LEAVING ATLANTA

If you haven’t yet read LEAVING ATLANTA by Tayari Jones, then by all means do so. Especially if , like the author (and myself), you were a young school-age child in the late 70′s and early 80′s, when this horror story about a serial killer who targeted black children in the ATL had our nation riveted to all available sources of  news.  I remember being in the fifth grade and being warned by parents, relatives, and church members (even though we lived about 800 miles west, in Louisiana) to “stay where I can see you” and “when the streetlights come on, you come in” and other such admonitions regarding  our personal safety.  The killer, I remember some of the elders hypothesizing, was probably some card-carrying member of the KKK who lures black children into the back of his old pickup truck with promises of a shiny new bike.  Remember how shocked we all were when they announced on the news that they’d made an arrest, and then showed the killer’s face?

This is what I’ll be re-reading in the coming days as I’m debating over what to do about certain unruly, minor characters who are demanding to be placed front and center in my was-nearly-done-until-now second novel. Tasha, Rodney, and Octavia, the children in LEAVING ATLANTA, are front and center in this two-year nightmare during which nearly thirty of their peers turn up missing and are subsequently found murdered.  I read this haunting tale in much the same way I read Toni Morrison’s books – going back to pages I’d already read to make sure I wasn’t missing a single thing, and, re-reading the entire novel. Like good books do, LEAVING ATLANTA sticks in your mind long, long after you’ve turned that last page.

Highly recommended.