In Harlem, 1976, Sadie Mae Robinson arrives home with a black eye after yet another fight with her boyfriend to an expulsion letter from Columbia. As if having her mother tell her to come back home to Watts didn't give her enough reason, discovering the trunk of her Oldsmobile Toronado full of stashed contraband gets her on the road, fast. On the way out of town, she picks up a passenger when Kit Maynard stumbles into traffic and onto the hood of her car. He's good for gas money, rolling joints and reciting Walt Whitman, but when his more serious substances run out halfway across Pennsylvania, Sadie Mae to decide what to do about her Whiteboy.
Drinking, motorcycles, trains, and mountains of love, all these things crash together in Clay Blancett's novel Whiteboy. Our protagonist, "fired-again" alcoholic Kit, manages to destroy his life as quickly as he hopes to save it. When he stumbles upon Toronado-owning Sadie who's just suffered a heart-rendering break, they pair up on a cross-country journey through the Midwest and Rockies on roads of forgotten farms and mountain cliff churches. However, this seemingly familiar storyline fractures, as Kit goes his own way, meandering into his uncle's Oakland bike repair shop. Sadie returns to family in Watts to reassess her passions and priorities. Will this pair reconnect?
Blancett has a genius for taking us deeply inside unique worlds, immersing us in a culture's details that fascinate and invigorate. The same way his novel Avenue of Champions slammed us into the intriguing (Yes! Intriguing!) world of Richmond's garbage collection trucks, Whiteboy hurls readers into motorcycle culture and all the idiosyncrasies of engine and chassis repair, all the machinations of the personalities drawn to making each bike as perfect as an orchid of steel and glass. He does the same for the tough and rugged streets of Watts and its people. Blancett has fired up another fast-paced narrative that dips deeply into gritty worlds that sling both the protagonists and the reader outward-reborn!
--Michael Trammell, author of Chiefs: A Novel-in-Verse and Rad Sick
