A thought-provoking historical fiction novel about 1940s Harlem

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	• Strivers Row CD Kevin Baker HarperAudio, 2006 average customer review:based on 10 reviews view larger image
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highly recommended

Least Fiery of Baker's Trilogy

The third in Baker's "City of Fire" trilogy of historical fiction about New York City, this book is set in the early `40s in Harlem with the story told through the eyes of a young Malcolm Little, who in later life would become Malcolm X, and the fictional Rev. Jonah Dove (based on Adam Clayon Powell, who also appears as himself in the book.)

Baker's meticulous research results in Harlem scenes that resonate with believability. Laid against the backdrop is the story of Malcolm and Elijah Muhammad (founder of the Black Muslims), which has to be dealt with on a symbolic level. While an enjoyable read, this one didn't quite measure up to the promise generated by Baker's first two parts of the trilogy, Dreamland and Paradise Alley.

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A thought-provoking historical fiction novel about 1940s Harlem

STRIVERS ROW is the third book in Kevin Baker's trilogy of historical novels about New York City. His ambition for these books is enormous, and it is the reader's good fortune that he has fulfilled, and then surpassed, the trilogy's huge potential.

As DREAMLAND, the first book, took readers to Coney Island at the turn of the century, and the second, PARADISE ALLEY, took us to the Lower East Side during the Draft Riots, STRIVERS ROW gives us Harlem just as World War II breaks out. Hustling, hellish, hard-hitting, hipped to the play Harlem --- just the sort of place a young man named Malcolm Little selling ice cream on the Yankee Clipper might plan to visit for an evening's entertainment and wind up never getting back on that train again. Malcolm Little is the cocky, good-time, pre-Islam Malcolm X, whose casual drug use and petty crime start to spiral out of control just as his rage over the condition of black Americans distills into an overwhelming feeling that there must be something more.

Malcolm shares the narrative with Jonah Dove, son of Milton Dove, whom readers might remember from PARADISE ALLEY. Jonah is a minister, pressed into inheriting his father's place in the church despite his doubts and lack of a calling. Milton Dove is a hero to his flock, the legendary founder of the church, and Jonah feels entirely inadequate to his task, a feeling that inevitably becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy. He has been secretly indulging his habit of "passing," banking on his light skin to lead people to assume that he is white, after a humiliating incident on the train. Malcolm Little witnessed the minister and his wife, saw how drunk white soldiers treated them, and the two men keep running into each other at crucial moments, both bewildered that "the man from the train" keeps turning up.

Malcolm is unaware that the love of his life, the white singer Miranda, is actually Jonah's equally light-skinned sister. She has turned passing into a way of life, protected by West Indian Archie, Malcolm's mentor in drug dealing and number-running. Kevin Baker makes the two men's frequent encounters seem inevitable: their problems of doubt and self-loathing are so similar and such products of being young black men in white America that they transcend all their differences in character. The crises increase until Harlem is on the brink of a riot and both men are matured and permanently changed by their experiences.

Strivers Row is an actual street in Harlem, the destination of choice for blacks who have found a way to succeed. World War II, however, makes it impossible to live there without remembering the Jews of Europe. They liked to live in the same neighborhoods too, and it only made it easier to round them up and kill them. The characters in STRIVERS ROW question if assimilating with mainstream white culture might be a better choice, and if it might not be self-destructive for black men to fight a white man's war.

Kevin Baker takes great glee in working in the colorful, marvelously funny slang of the period. Readers might find it helpful to peruse the jive glossary in the back of the book before plunging into this unforgettable novel about another of New York City's crucibles.

--- Reviewed by Colleen Quinn (CQuinn9368@yahoo.com)

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Powerful, true-ish story

I read this book for my book club, and I felt it was a powerful look at history and race. The injustices faced by the characters to be utterly gut-wrenching, and knowing that this is based on true life only makes it harder. An important and wonderfully written book.

An Extraordinary Experience

For six years and three books, Baker has been building, brick by brick, his own city, and it is a classic. With Striver's Row, the high-rises are inhabited, the streets are paved, the corners are teeming. You see how the country came together, and you understand that the world of books has been resting in sure hands. Baker has a detective's eye and a preservationist's heart: but most of all, he has a writer's head, and the proof is on every page. This book tops off a trilogy, but Striver's can be read alone; if it were a first novel, it'd be a cause for celebration. As the end of a series, it's an occassion for gratitude.

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Evocative and ambitious

This is a REAL novel, written by an authentic novelist. His recreation of 1940s Harlem as a moral universe unto itself unfolds like something Duke Ellington might have composed -- jaunty, sexy, smooth and bombastic. My only complaint would be that the narrative at times lacks a compelling drive, making some sections overly picaresque and stagnant. Nonetheless, an impressive piece of work.

reviews: page 1, 2

Summer 1943. Harlem is a never-ending carnival in the second year of the war. Yet underneath the glitter, its black residents remain second-class citizens, and the neighborhood is a tinderbox, waiting for a match.

Along these restless streets, two very different young men will cross paths. Their chance encounter will change both of their lives, and presage the battle for civil rights that is to come. Malcolm Little is a naive, cocky, troubled teenager and not yet the iconic civil rights leader Malcolm X. The Rev. Jonah Dove is the minister of one of Harlem's greatest churches, and lives in the blocks known as Strivers Row. Their lives intersect when Malcolm rescues Jonah and his wife from a group of drunken white soldiers. For Jonah, it is a crowning indignity that brings on a crisis of faith. But Malcolm, haunted by his own past, temporarily forgets the incident and plunges ecstatically into the nightlife of Harlem -- yet he finds it hollow at the core. Lonely and confused, he starts to have odd dreams and visions -- the beginning of a religious conversion that will overthrow his whole world.

As race riots break out across the homefront, and Harlem slides toward the brink, Jonah and Malcolm must confront their own demons. Their next meeting, in the midst of turmoil, will lead them both to make fateful choices, for themselves and for their people.

Completing his "City of Fire" trilogy, master storyteller Kevin Baker has once again woven an epic tale set against the panoramic backdrop of a vanished New York. Bold and exciting, evocative and unique, Strivers Row sets a new standard for modern historical fiction.

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