Long Division

Plot

A dazzling literary debut by a prodigious young black southern writer with a brilliant comic voice, that bends time in a narrative extending from the mid-Sixties to the early-Eighties to the present day.Kiese Laymon's debut novel is a Twain-esque exploration of celebrity, authorship, violence, religion, and coming of age in Post-Katrina Mississippi, written in a voice that's alternately funny, lacerating, and wise. The book contains two interwoven stories. In the first, it's 2013: after an on-stage meltdown during a nationally televised quiz contest, 14-year-old Citoyen 'City' Coldson becomes an overnight YouTube celebrity. The next day, he's sent to stay with his grandmother in the small coastal community of Melahatchie, where a young girl named Baize Shephard has recently disappeared.Before leaving, City is given a strange book without an author called 'Long Division.' He learns that one of the book's main characters is also named City Coldson-but 'Long Division' is set in 1985. This 1985 City, along with his friend and love-object, Shalaya Crump, discovers a way to travel into the future, and steals a laptop and cellphone from an orphaned teenage rapper called... Baize Shephard. They ultimately take these with them all the way back to 1964, to help another time-travelerthey meet protect his family from the Klan.City's two stories ultimately converge in the mysterious work shed behind his grandmother's, where he discovers the key to Baize's disappearance.