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Marking a dramatic new direction for Jones, a riveting tale set in the Post WWII South, narrated by a Black soldier who returns to Jim Crow and searches for a mythical ideal.
Set in the early 1950s, this latest novel from Pulitzer Prize and National Book Award finalist Gayl Jones follows the witty but perplexing army veteran Buddy Ray Guy as he embodies the fate of Black soldiers who return, not in glory, but into their Jim Crow communities.
A cook and tractor repairman, Buddy was known as Budweiser to his army pals because he's a wise guy. But underneath that surface, he is a true self-educated intellectual and a classic seeker: looking for religion, looking for meaning, looking for love.
As he moves around the south, from his hometown of Lexington, Kentucky, primarily, to his second home of Memphis, Tennessee, he recalls his love affairs in post-war France and encounters with a variety of colorful characters and mythical prototypes: circus barkers, topiary trimmers, landladies who provide shelter and plenty of advice for their all-Black clientele, proto feminists, and bigots. The lead among these characters is, of course, The Unicorn Woman, who exists, but mostly lives in Bud's private mythology.
Jones offers a rich, intriguing exploration of Black (and Indigenous) people in a time and place of frustration, disappointment, and spiritual hope.
"A surprising, welcome gift from one of America's finest and least predictable writers." —Kirkus Reviews (starred review)
"Jones's rich characterizations and wit are on display." —Publishers Weekly
"Jones is skilled at balancing the observational with the intimate, and in Buddy we are given a fully realized character who epitomizes the frustrations, heartbreak, and humor of a generation of Black Americans." —Booklist
This information about The Unicorn Woman was first featured
in "The BookBrowse Review" - BookBrowse's membership magazine, and in our weekly "Publishing This Week" newsletter. Publication information is for the USA, and (unless stated otherwise) represents the first print edition. The reviews are necessarily limited to those that were available to us ahead of publication. If you are the publisher or author and feel that they do not properly reflect the range of media opinion now available, send us a message with the mainstream reviews that you would like to see added.
Any "Author Information" displayed below reflects the author's biography at the time this particular book was published.
Photo: Connecticut College, "Koiné 1971"
Gayl Jones was born in Kentucky in 1949. She attended Connecticut College and Brown University, and has taught at Wellesley and the University of Michigan. Her landmark books include Corregidora, Eva's Man, and The Healing, the last a National Book Award finalist and New York Times Notable Book of the Year. Her book Palmares was named a New York Times Editors' Choice and has received countless other accolades.
If you liked The Unicorn Woman, try these:
by Gayl Jones
Published 2023
Legendary writer Gayl Jones returns with a stunning new novel about Black American artists in exile.
by Leah Weiss
Published 2021
A Southern story of friendship forged by books and bees, when the timeless troubles of growing up meet the murky shadows of World War II.
by Margaret Wilkerson Sexton
Published 2020
Following her National Book Award–nominated debut novel, A Kind of Freedom, Margaret Wilkerson Sexton returns with this equally elegant and historically inspired story of survivors and healers, of black women and their black sons, set in the American South.
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