Against a backdrop of the Harlem Renaissance and Haile Selassie’s Ethiopia, a young man tails Hubert Julian — a pilot, inventor, adventurer, charlatan, and possible threat to America.
Facing an attempted murder charge, seventeen-year-old Arthur Tormes is in no position to refuse when a federal agent named Riley Triggs offers him a deal: all charges get dropped and Arthur goes free if he agrees to help the Bureau with a problem.
That problem is Hubert Julian, a.k.a. the Black Eagle of Harlem: inventor, pilot, parachutist, daredevil, charlatan, and one of the most extraordinary and popular figures of the Harlem Renaissance. For Triggs, it’s the popularity that makes Julian a serious threat to the well-being of America.
To win his freedom, Arthur begins a spying mission that will occupy the next thirteen years of his life, taking him from 1920s New York City to Ethiopia on the verge of war — often at great personal cost. In the end, while America remains safe, Arthur Tormes’s fate is less certain.
Authors
- Pages
- 376
- Published in
- Toronto, CA
- Rights
- Bruce Geddes
Table of Contents
- Cover 1
- Half Title Page 3
- Title Page 5
- Copyright 6
- Dedication 7
- Part One 11
- 1 The Fledgling Menace 13
- 2 A Credit to the Race 17
- 3 Go On, Take It 20
- 4 Sometimes You Can’t Trust People. But Other Times, You Can 25
- 5 Change of Plans 30
- 6 Something Moving Behind the Walls 34
- 7 You Could Be a Bit Negro 37
- 8 He Could See I Had Some Doubts 40
- 9 In That Jumble of Voices I Heard Some Things 46
- 10 Some Kind of Death Wish 50
- 11 He Laid Claim to the Sky 54
- 12 I Had the Waters Flowing in the Right Direction 57
- 13 Trust Me, It’s a Real Chore 61
- 14 He Liked to Stoke my Anxieties 69
- 15 God Bless the Black Eel 75
- 16 I Worried I’d Exposed Myself 81
- 17 Accelerants of an Inevitable Conflagration (the First) 88
- 18 The Hard Part about Having Your Foot in the Door 93
- 19 I Have a Few of Those, Too 98
- 20 It’s Akin to Lancing a Boil 104
- 21 Certain Suspicions Arose 109
- 22 I Was Flooded With ParalyZing Misgivings 114
- 23 We Are Going to Make History 120
- 24 We Managed to Wriggle Around Our Secrecies 128
- 25 I Felt the Peculiar, Paradoxical Alignment of Our Interests 132
- 26 Spare Your Skin! 137
- 27 I Felt Ambushed 140
- 28 He Practically Murdered Those Spikes 145
- 29 You Can’t Put a Price on Freedom, But There It Was 151
- 30 Refusing to Help Could Be Taken as a Lack of Faith 160
- 31 I Basically Executed the Poor Slob 163
- 32 All I Had to Do Was Hit the Brakes 169
- 33 You Meet a Man When He’s Sixteen, You’ve Seen Him at His Worst 173
- 34 Vague Details of a Future Hovered in the Air 181
- 35 He Expanded Himself 185
- 36 I Dug Past the Loose Dirt and Rubble 193
- Part Two 201
- 37 Away from the Sea, the Heat Punched Hard 203
- 38 She Lowered Her Voice to a Conspiratorial Level 210
- 39 He Became a Major Attraction 216
- 40 It’s Not So Easy to Find a Worthy Opponent 220
- 41 I’d Walk to the Lip of an Active Volcano 223
- 42 The Excuses Eased In 226
- 43 I’d Been Getting Careless with Consequences 231
- 44 She Fired a Warning Shot 234
- 45 The Moment Was Wrong for Long and Complicated Revelations 240
- 46 That First Sound Was Innocent 245
- 47 You Might Not Wake Up at All 250
- 48 I Couldn’t Quite Laugh 255
- 49 You Can Prove the Logicability 258
- 50 This Is the World, Do What You Like 260
- 51 She Didn’t Get My Attachment to Her Husband 269
- 52 Fewer Were Willing to Join the Parade 272
- 53 The Emperor Needs All Hands on Deck 275
- 54 We’re Not Hitting the Right Tone 279
- 55 The Brown Bomber Fights the Mountain Man 282
- 56 From What I Hear, He Gave It to Her Pretty Good 286
- 57 Accelerants of an Inevitable Conflagration (the Second) 289
- 58 Don’t Tell Me You’re Breaking Up Ethiopian Marriages Now 291
- 59 Here, I’m a Master 295
- 60 She Didn’t Need to Remind Me Which One of Us Had Landed Upright 302
- 61 When the Women Return to the Gebbi 307
- 62 It’s What I Get for Being Too Damn Clever 312
- 63 I Knew What It Was to Be Uprooted 315
- 64 Been Insulted Lately? 319
- 65 I Was Sucked In 324
- 66 I Changed the Circumstances 327
- 67 I Told Them They Are Fooling Themselves 330
- 68 I Appeal to the World 334
- Part Three 339
- 69 There Is No War! There Is No Invasion! 341
- 70 Maybe I Could Call It a Habit 343
- 71 If There Was One Thing I Had Right 346
- 72 The Sooner, the Better 349
- 73 He Once Owned the Sky above This Place 353
- 74 A Strange Feeling, A Clean Feeling 360
- Afterword 367
- Notes 371
- Acknowledgements and Sources 373
- About the Author 377
- Back Cover 378
