Grant Park - by Leonard Pitts Jr (Paperback)

About the Book

Includes Q&A with the author and book club discussion guide.

Book Synopsis

"A novel as significant as it is engrossing." --Booklist, starred review

Grant Park is a page-turning and provocative look at black and white relations in contemporary America, blending the absurd and the poignant in a powerfully well-crafted narrative that showcases Pitts's gift for telling emotionally wrenching stories.

Grant Park begins in 1968, with Martin Luther King's final days in Memphis. The story then moves to the eve of the 2008 election, and cuts between the two eras. Disillusioned columnist Malcolm Toussaint, fueled by yet another report of unarmed black men killed by police, hacks into his newspaper's server to post an incendiary column that had been rejected by his editors. Toussaint then disappears, and his longtime editor, Bob Carson, is summarily fired within hours of the column's publication.

While a furious Carson tries to find Toussaint--while simultaneously dealing with the reappearance of a lost love from his days as a 60s activist--Toussaint is abducted by two white supremacists plotting to explode a bomb at Barack Obama's planned rally in Chicago's Grant Park. Toussaint and Carson are forced to remember the choices they made as young men, when both their lives were changed profoundly by their work in the civil rights movement.

Review Quotes

Praise for Leonard Pitts, Jr.'s novel GRANT PARK:

"Grant Park is layered, insightful, and passionate. Pitts's subtly explosive language grips readers with the delicate subject matter and earnestly implores them to understand that '[race] has always meant something and it always will.' The scars will remain, but stunningly powerful examinations like Grant Park can be the salve that helps heal open wounds." --Shelf-Awareness, starred review

"Leonard Pitts has written a taut thriller that weaves together a stark look at America's tortured racial past with a fast-paced tale of terrorist conspiracy and love rekindled." --Neil Steinberg, Chicago Sun Times

". . . these ideas [are] perennially salient, and doubly so today, given a growing litany of American sorrows, from Ferguson to Charleston and beyond. . . . lays bare the extent to which Americans, black and white, still struggle to articulate the basic elements of our shared past." -- Vinson Cunningham, New York Times Book Review

"The book is a page-turner, but also one that commands deep reflection on history, racism, and personal choices." --Blanca Torres, The Seattle Times

"A novel as significant as it is engrossing." --Booklist, starred review

"Pitts masterfully revisits [election night on November 4, 2008] and four decades of the civil rights struggle to create one of the most suspenseful and spectacular fictitious moments you'll experience this fall." --Patrik Henry Bass, Essence

"Pitts does a skillful job of building tension in the novel's historical sections as well as on Election Day. . . . He also does something not every political thriller writer does: builds believable, complex characters." -- Colette Bancroft, Tampa Bay Times

"[A] high-stakes, hard-charging political thriller. . . . The sharply etched characters, careful attention to detail, and rich newspaper lore propel Pitts's socially relevant novel." --Publishers Weekly

"And then there are those thrills--gasping, mouth-gaping page-turners that author Leonard Pitts Jr. weaves through another realism: truthful, brutal plot-lines about racial issues of the last five decades, mulling over exactly how far we've really come. That makes this will-they-live-or-won't-they nail-biter into something that also made me think, and I absolutely loved it." --Terri Schlichenmeyer, The Bookworm Sez

"An important book, one that honestly examines the current, tumultuous racial divide in our country and demands we not turn away from its harsh realities." --Amy Canfield, Miami Herald

"Grant Park is a book that's both socially relevant and a lot of fun." --NewCity

"In the aftermath of this summer's racially motivated mass murder in Charleston, South Carolina, by an avowed white supremacist, there's near-eerie prescience in Pitts' historical novel. . .[Grant Park], with urgency and passion, makes readers aware that the mistakes of the past are neglected at the future's peril." --Kirkus Reviews

"Grant Park is a monumental work, so all-encompassing in scope that reviewers will be hard-pressed to do it justice. Pitts's passion for a solution holds strong to the end of his novel even as his central character seems to give up. Readers will find Grant Park is real." --Bookpleasures.com

"Grant Park is a thriller, and readers will find themselves turning pages accordingly, although the interior stories of Bob and Malcolm regarding their younger selves may be the real action." --Brian Burnes, The Kansas City Star

Praise for Leonard Pitts, Jr.'s previous novel FREEMAN:

"A uniquely American epic. . . by a knowledgeable, compassionate and relentlessly truthful writer." --Howard Frank Mosher, Washington Post

"A pretty powerful love story." --Audie Cornish, All Things Considered

"Gorgeously written; a searing, wrenching read. Fans of Cold Mountain and Cormac McCarthy will love this story." --Jennifer Weiner, author of The Next Best Thing

"Leonard Pitts has a passion for history and a gift for storytelling. Both shine in this story of love and redemption." --Gwen Ifill, PBS, author of The Breakthrough

"Freeman is a myth of what's humanly possible, a needed story about little-known heroism, and a shadow thrown forward to the struggles of American families in the 21st century." --John Timpane, Philadelphia Inquirer

"A wonderful, moving, riveting novel." --Gabrielle Union, actress

"Post-Civil War America is fertile ground for novelists, but few have tilled it with such grace and majesty as Leonard Pitts." --Herb Boyd, co-editor of By Any Means Necessary--Malcolm X: Real, not Reinvented

"This book is an eye-opening commentary on devotion during this tangled chapter of American history." --Wendi Thomas, Memphis Commercial Appeal

"Leonard Pitts, Jr. crafts a novel as well as the great storytellers of our time. Freeman captured my attention from the very first sentence and my heart throughout." --Sybil Wilkes, The Tom Joyner Morning Show

"Freeman reminds us of our humanity." --Nancy Olson, owner of Quail Ridge Books, Raleigh, North Carolina

About the Author

Leonard Pitts, Jr. is a nationally syndicated columnist for the Miami Herald and winner of the 2004 Pulitzer Prize for commentary, in addition to many other awards. He is the author of the novels Grant Park, Freeman, Before I Forget, and several works of nonfiction. Born and raised in Southern California, Pitts now lives in suburban Washington, D.C.