21 Sugar Street

Critically acclaimed in the New York Times Book Review, Chicago Tribune, and Los Angeles Times, Lynn Lauber's first book, White Girls, announced the debut of a new and distinctive voice in American fiction. Now, in 21 Sugar Street, Lauber returns to Loretta Dardio and Luther Biggs, a white girl and a black boy whose brief but powerfully affecting love affair irrevocably changed their lives and those of their families in the racially divided town of Union, Ohio. Lauber. paints a portrait of Union as mythic and resonant as Sherwood Anderson's Winesburg, Ohio. In the twenty years that have passed since Loretta and Luther's high school affair, Loretta has given up their illegitimate daughter for adoption and escaped to New York, while Luther has continued to make a life for himself in Union. Through multiple perspectives we meet this long-divided couple and others: Junior Johnson, the town's black mortician and Luther's father-in-law; Louis Dardio, Loretta's straight-laced younger brother, who is at once charmed and appalled by his sister's independence and willfulness; Annie Biggs, Luther's warm-hearted mother, who remains faithful to Loretta and her child; Marcia Milner, the disturbed adoptive brother; and finally Kay, the fruit of Loretta and Luther's union, who as a young woman returns to bridge their divided world, a reminder in these racially troubled times of love's capacity to transform and. heal. Charles Baxter has called Lynn Lauber "a writer of considerable, exacting talents," and in this mesmerizing, surprising, unforgettable novel, Lauber has fulfilled her promise.