Juneteenth

Published after Ellison''s death, this follow-up to Invisible Man is a thunderous epic of memory, faith, loss and identity. ''Words are your business, boy. Not just the Word. Words are everything'' ''Tell me what happened while there''s still time,'' demands the dying Senator Adam Sunraider to the itinerate black baptist minister he calls Daddy Hickman. As a young orphan, Sunraider was taken in and raised by Hickman, before reinventing himself as a racist politician. Now, as the two men confront the truth about their shared past in a final reckoning, Ellison''s masterly novel takes in memories of a southern childhood, the rhythms of jazz and gospel and the richness of the African-American experience. ''Majestic'' Toni Morrison