Freedom Land - Hardcover

In Freedomland, Richard Price returns to the gritty terrain he first explored in Clockers. This time, the fictional (but all too convincing) urban eyesore of Dempsy, New Jersey, is convulsed by a high-profile carjacking. A single mom named Brenda Martin insists that a man stopped her car, yanked her from behind the wheel and drove off with the vehicle--and her young son. Behind these horrific facts looms another: the victim is white and the perpetrator is black. Immediately the racial calculus of American life comes to bear on the crime, which becomes a focus for long-smoldering animosities. As a three-ring circus of media, cops and gawkers converges on the crime scene, Dempsy and the adjoining white community of Gannon seem primed for an explosion. Price passes the narrative baton back and forth between Lorenzo Council, an ambitious black detective, and Jesse Haus, a no-less-ambitious reporter for the local paper. Lorenzo's street-smart, agitated voice is the more convincing of the two. Jesse, with her frantic compulsion to squeeze local colour from the crisis, never quite attains three dimensions--though her outsider's relationship to her material suggests some faint, fascinating echo of the author's. In any case, Price allows the story to proceed at an irresistible slow burn. His ear for dialogue is as sharp as ever and nobodycasts a colder or more accurate eye on our fin-de-siècle urban existence.

"A big, cinemascope thriller, a novel that captures the racial politics and media madness of the Age of O.J., a novel that transforms today's headlines into a forceful, harrowing drama....a terrific read...Price has written his most powerful novel yet."
--Michiko Kakutani, New York Times

Praise for Richard Price and his work:

"Price shows that he's got the best equipment a novelist can have--that combination of muscularity, insight, and compassion we might call heart."
--Washington Post Book World

"Price pressure cooks the city down to its dense, searing essentials."
--Village Voice Literary Supplement

"Powerful...harrowing...a drama of quite remarkable complexity."
--the New York Times on Clockers

"Clockers is a great piece of work."
--Tom Wolfe

From the Hardcover edition.