The Seeking (New England Library of Black Literature) [Paperback] Thomas, Will; Madigan, Mark J.; Gediman, Dan and Fisher, Dorothy Canfield

Novelist Will Thomas had been a logger in Maine, a crew member on a fishing boat in Alaska, a prizefighter on the West Coast, a scriptwriter in Los Angeles, and a journalist in Kansas City, Chicago, and New York. In 1946 he, his wife, and three children abandoned a plan to move to Haiti to escape racial prejudice in the United States. Instead, they made the improbable decision to purchase a home in tiny Westford, Vermont, twenty miles northeast of Burlington. At the time, the Thomases were the only non-white members of the community. The Seeking is the grim account of the Thomases&; lives before Vermont, their decision to give living in America one last chance, and the moving, heartfelt, uplifting story of their time among the people of Westford&;a life, writes Thomas, &;not based on race, but on what we and they [were] like as human beings.&;Back in print for the first time in fifty years, this edition includes a new introduction that situates The Seeking in the canon of twentieth-century black literature, and a new afterword that follows the fortunes of Thomas and his family in the years after its initial publication. With appearances by the author&;s notable friends, including the novelist Chester Himes and sociologist Horace Cayton, Jr., The Seeking is both a story of one remarkable African-American family and a story of New England race relations in the first half of the twentieth century.