Synopses & Reviews
On the island of Martha's Vineyard in the 1950s there exists a proud, insular, nearly unassailable community known as the Oval, made up of the best and brightest of New York's and Boston's black bourgeoisie. Dr. Clark Coles and his wife Corinne, pillars of this community, are mortified that their youngest daughter Shelby is set on marrying Meade Wyler, a white jazz musician from New York. Equally alarmed is Lute McNeil, a successful black furniture maker from Boston who is new to Oak Bluffs and desperate for social acceptance. Lute has fallen in love with Shelby Coles, or at least the way of life she represents, and he will stop at nothing to pull her away from Meade.
As the day of the wedding approaches, the tension surrounding Shelby, Lute, and Meade builds, climaxing in a single tragic act that will forever change the lives of three American families. The Wedding is a wise and heartfelt novel about the shackles of race and class we all wear and the price we pay to break them. It is also an unforgettable history of the rise of the black middle class, written by a woman who lived it. Wise, heartfelt, and shattering, The Wedding is Dorothy West's crowning achievement, and one of the last books edited for Doubleday by the late Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis.
About the Author
Dorothy West's career spans eight decades. A leading light of the Harlem Renaissance movement of the 1930s, she founded literary magazines Challenge and New Challenge. Her short stories appear in numerous anthologies of 20th century African-American fiction. She died in 1998