From the wildly popular author of the groundbreaking debut The Portable Promised Land comes an inventive and hilarious first novel about an African-American utopia threatened by the darker side of human nature.
Welcome to Soul City, where roses bloom in the cracks of the sidewalk along Cornbread Boulevard, musical genres become political platforms, and children use their allowance money to buy records from the Vinyl Man. Its an unusually peaceful and magical American community with a strong heritage and sense of unity — at least, thats how journalist Cadillac Jackson first finds it.
When Jackson visits Soul City on a magazine assignment, a mayoral election is imminent and candidates from opposing parties are battling to control the citys soundtrack. Amidst the increasingly hostile campaign, Cadillac falls for Mahogany Sunflower, a beautiful Soul Cityzen, and begins a struggle to shed the embattled African-American identity hes been taught to adopt, in order to exist in a community where the content of his character really does determine a black mans identity. What he discovers reveals as much about himself as it does about human nature and the meaning of race in America.