Info
Catalogue #:336
ISBN: 40506-0336 cloth $25.00
Catalogue #516 paperback $15.95
To purchase online
paperback
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Awards
Winner of the Governor's Writers Award
(Washington State) in 1989.
Description
A nonfiction narrative which traces the
family of Patience Gromes across the century from the Civil War to the war on poverty. The
story begins with her grandfather, who escaped from slavery at age 14. The final acts of
the story are played out in Fulton, where Patience and her husband (and a generation of
like-minded striving African-American folk) worked and lived and reared families and
worshipped and died.
In the bleak years after the Civil War, free in name but economically subservient, the
parents and grandparents of Patience Gromes designed a strategy for lifting themselves and
their people: forgiveness, hard work, thrift, and land ownership. How would their ideals
play out in the difficult years of Reconstruction?
After the turn of the century, Patience moved to Richmond, Virginia and to the working
class shantytown of Fulton, built on the banks of the James River. Here she applied the
high-minded notions of her parents. During years of lynching and Jim Crow, how would she
fare? In Civil Rights, Patience organized, and her people won. Could Patience, the
grandchild of a slave, survive the victory?
A book about values. The story of the Gromes family demonstrates that the tools which heal
social disintegration are personal, mental, and available to any individual.
Quotes
"Scott C. Davis is a gifted writer."
– Horton Foote
"A fascinating, close-up look at the lives of poor black people
in a time of change and tension, and an affirmation of the traditional values that enabled
black survival."
– John E. Jacob, as President, National Urban League
From the
Press
"A small but important gem of a book. Its virtues are vivid
characters, a fascinating story, and a transparently clear and often moving prose
style."
– Wall Street Journal
"Dramatically, presciently told, here is a story book to treasure, one that cannot be
ignored by anyone concerned with the human condition."
– Antioch Review
"Davis tells his story with a reporter's keen interest in what happens and how, a
novelist's eye for character, and a playwright's sense of drama."
– Christian Science Monitor
To purchase online
paperback
To purchase by other methods go to
purchasing options
Author's Bio
Scott C. Davis is a Seattle author and building contractor. He has written two
award winning books: The World of Patience Gromes: Making and Unmaking a Black
Community and Lost Arrow and Other True Stories. Davis founded Cune Press in
1994 and conceived and edited An Ear to the Ground: Presenting Writers from 2 Coasts.
Comments from Readers
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