NATIONAL BESTSELLERAn extraordinary book, a work of staggering virtuosity. With its publication, a giant world of literature has just grown twice as tall.--NewsdayFrom Ralph Ellison--author of the classic novel of African-American experience, Invisible Man--the long-awaited second novel. Here is the master of American vernacular--the rhythms of jazz and gospel and ordinary speech--at the height of his powers, telling a powerful, evocative tale of a prodigal of the twentieth century. Tell me what happened while theres still time, demands the dying Senator Adam Sunraider to the itinerate Negro preacher whom he calls Daddy Hickman. As a young man, Sunraider was Bliss, an orphan taken in by Hickman and raised to be a preacher like himself. Blisss history encompasses the joys of young southern boyhood bucolic days as a filmmaker, lovemaking in a field in the Oklahoma sun.
