Synopses & Reviews
"Brilliant....The rare first novel that makes future ones seem both inevitable and exciting." Kathryn Shulz, The New Yorker
June, 1957. One hot afternoon in the backwaters of the Deep South, a young black farmer named Tucker Caliban salts his fields, shoots his horse, burns his house, and heads north with his wife and child. His departure sets off an exodus of the state's entire black population, throwing the established order into brilliant disarray. Told from the points of view of the white residents who remained, A Different Drummer stands, decades after its first publication in 1962, as an extraordinary and prescient triumph of satire and spirit.
Review
"A rare first novel; dynamic, imaginative, and accomplished." Chicago Sunday Tribune
Review
"[A] lost giant of American literature... Brilliant." The New Yorker
Review
"This fierce and brilliant novel is written with sympathy as well as sorrow. It's a myth packed with real-world resonance." The Guardian
About the Author
William Melvin Kelley was born in New York City in 1937 and attended the Fieldston School and Harvard. The author of four novels and a short story collection, he was a writer in residence at the State University of New York at Geneseo and also taught at the New School and Sarah Lawrence College. He was awarded the Anisfield-Wolf Book Award for lifetime achievement and the Dana Reed Prize for creative writing. He died in 2017.