Man Gone Down -- Michael Thomas

<p><b>"Powerful and moving . . . [Thomas] knows how the odds are stacked in America."-Kaiama L. Glover, <i>New York Times Book Review </i>(cover review)</b></p><p><b>A beautifully written and devastating first novel, <i>Man Gone Down </i>is the story of a young Black father in a biracial marriage trying to claim a piece of the American Dream he has bargained on since youth</b></p><p>On the eve of his thirty-fifth birthday, the unnamed Black narrator of <i>Man Gone Down</i> finds himself broke, estranged from his white wife and three children, and living in the bedroom of a friend's six-year-old child. He has four days to come up with the money to keep the kids in school and make a down payment on an apartment for them in which to live. As we slip between his childhood in inner city Boston and present-day New York City, we learn of a life marked by abuse, abandonment, raging alcoholism, and the best and worst intentions of a supposedly integrated America. This is a story of the American Dream gone awry, about what it's like to feel preprogrammed to fail in life and the urge to escape that sentence.</p><p>Michael Thomas's writing recalls some of the great American masters, including Ralph Ellison, but his debut is wholly and distinctly an original. <i>Man Gone Down</i> is a dazzling addition to the literature of and about America today.</p><br><br><b>Author:</b> Michael Thomas<br><b>Publisher:</b> Grove Press, Black Cat<br><b>Published:</b> 12/07/2006<br><b>Pages:</b> 432<br><