Alston Anderson (1924–2008)

Stories of black American life that take place in a small Alabama town, a school in North Carolina, wartime Germany and 1950s New York City. A family in Alabama, the Jessups are featured in the stories, which encompass trouble at home, friendship trouble, friendship turned tragic, to love gone wrong.

In Comrade, a soldier saves a German Shepherd and returns him to the family German soldiers had taken him from. Dance of the Infidels is a stand-out, where jazz, drugs and gay life converge in Harlem.

There’s an afterword where Kinohi Nishikawa provides details of Alston Anderson’s life, which seems both accomplished and underappreciated. This collection appropriately has an undercurrent of sadness. This book was a good choice for resurrection and reprinting.… (meer)