A Short Walk

A Short Walk is a sweeping epic novel, which captures the movement of black Americans from the rural south to the urban north.

Cora James, born to a black woman who has had a love affair with a white man, grows up poor in South Carolina, marries an abusive—albeit, wealthy—preacher, and escapes from him by going north to Harlem. There she earns money dealing cards and performing in a number of traveling vaudeville shows. She survives the Great Depression, and experiences life as a wife, mothe...