Those Bones Are Not My Child

1999 | Crime | Mystery | Thriller

Those Bones Are Not My Child is a staggering achievement: the novel that Toni Cade Bambara worked on for twelve years until her death in 1995 - - - a story that puts us at the center of the nightmare of the Atlanta child murders. It was called 'The City Too Busy To Hate,' but two decades ago more than forty black children were murdered there with grim determination, their bodies found- - - in ditches, on riverbanks- - - strangled, beaten, and sexually assaulted. Bambara was living in Atlanta at the time, and Those Bones Are Not My Child is the result of her painstaking first-hand research, as she delved into the murders and the world in which they occurred. Evoking the culture of the late 1970s and early '80s with a keen eye- - - the Iranian hostage crisis, disco, Travis Bickle of 'Taxi Driver'- - - Those Bones Are Not My Child powerfully dramatizes the story of one black family surviving on the margins of a seemingly prosperous city. On Sunday morning, July 20,1980, Marzala Rawls Spencer awakens to find that her teenage son has gone missing, even as the Atlanta child abductions are beginning to be reported. As she and her estranged husband frantically search for their son, the story moves with authority through the full spectrum of Atlanta's political, social, and cultural life, illuminating the vexing issues of race and class that bedevil the city.

Toni Cade Bambara (Author)