Woodridge, Illinois (PRWEB) June 05, 2013
In “Dark Days: A Tale of Love Along the Color Line” (published by iUniverse), a novel by the late Dewey Roscoe Jones, readers follow an African American man as he struggles to live and love after the Civil War. It is a story of love, justice, equality, sacrifice and brutality.
Ishmael, the protagonist of “Dark Days,” comes of age in post-Reconstruction Oklahoma, a wild territory where former slaves and their offspring vie with former plantation owners and their offspring to make a new life. Theirs is a common legacy of frontier violence and frontier dreams, born in the aftermath of the Civil War, the forcible removal of Native Americans and the 1889 Land Rush. At the core of the novel is a forbidden love story between Ishmael and Denise, who are separated by a racial barrier.
An excerpt from “Dark Days”:
‘Tiny rays of morning were fighting their way through the heavy fog that rose up over the river valley, far to the northeast and drifted toward the city. ‘How like our lives is that ray of light in a fog,’ she said half aloud. ‘We grope and grope, knowing not where we are travelling, nor why we wish to get there, but the struggle to conquer pushes us on. And there’s always the fog.’”
Jones’ son, Dewey Roscoe Jones II, believes his father’s book carries a message that has transcended time and is still as relevant today as when the book was written. “I cannot say what my father intended,” says Dewey Roscoe Jones II. “For my part, I hope that readers are entertained and impressed to understand that we are all equal and we should help and protect each other rather than hurt and exploit one another.”
About the Author
Dewey Roscoe Jones, a Chicago Defender journalist with a bachelor’s degree in journalism from the University of Michigan and a master’s degree in journalism from Columbia University in New York, died unexpectedly in 1939 before he was able to publish his novel. His son published his novel posthumously.
Dewey Roscoe Jones II holds a bachelor’s degree in liberal arts from the University of Chicago, a master’s degree in Spanish language and literature from the National Autonomous University of Mexico and a doctorate in law from the Chicago Kent College of Law. He is the editor of his late father’s novel “Dark Days.”
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