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Summary
Summary
Abel Jones Jr., a civil rights lawyer's son turned black Washington neo-con, has met an unlikely end: collapsing at the Rebel Yell dinner theater, surrounded by actors in Confederate regalia, with his white second wife at his side. Hope Jones Blackshear, Abel's first wife and mother of his only son, is left confounded by the turn his life took in his later years.
Sharing a drink after the funeral with Abel's old friend Nicholas Gordon, Hope lets herself reminisce about first meeting Abel at Harvard, and their early married days as a foreign service couple in Manila and Martinique. But her own version of history is altered by that of Nicholas, a dandified Brit who seems to know more than he lets on. To fully understand the story of Abel Jones, for her own sake and that of their teenage son, Hope journeys from Nashville to Rome, seeking the connectionbetween the Abel she loved, a child of Southern terror in the sixties, and the Abel who became a White House watchdog of global terror, driven to measures Hope could never have imagined.
The work of one of our gutsiest writers, Rebel Yell is a novel of resilient love, political intrigue, and family secrets, steeped in our country's racial history and framing our unique political moment.
Reviews (1)
Kirkus Review
Placing a black conservative born into the civil-rights aristocracy at the center of her new novel, Randall (Pushkin and the Queen of Spades, 2004, etc.) explores race in contemporary America. Abel Jones Jr. is the descendant of activists and artists who fought for African-American dignity and forged comfortable communities for themselves in the midcentury South. Abel dies in the men's room of the Rebel Yell dinner theater while his white second wife, a one-time country singer, and their children watch actors in gray uniforms reenact the Confederacy's most glorious moments. As she surveys the high-ranking Pentagon officials and Republican luminaries who assemble for his funeral, Abel's black first wife, Hope, feels compelled to understand how the man she once loved turned into a self-hating African-American and a darling of the neocon movement. (Abel seems to be an amalgam of Colin Powell and Alberto Gonzales, while another character is clearly based on Condoleezza Rice.) Hope's search for answers gives this narrative shape, and the author is adept at depicting the complex interactions among races, classes and generations. When Abel's wife rejects the baked goods and casseroles offered by black Nashville's matriarchs in favor of a catered buffetThai, no lessfor Abel's wake, the reader learns just about everything there is to know about where Abel came from and where he ended up. Unfortunately, Randall is not always so discerning; she devotes an entire paragraph, for example, to her protagonist's bathroom dcor, preferred toothbrush and choice of washcloth. Such pointless details, indulged in again and again, distract from the central, essential mystery: Who was Abel Jones Jr.? An intriguing premise poorly executed. Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.