Close to the Bone: A Novel

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In the tradition of Bebe Moore Campbell, Terry McMillan, and E. Lynn Harris, author Jake Lamar has created a riveting novel of three young couples whose lives intersect in curious ways. And the question that torments all of them: What is a black man?

Hal Hardaway is a young black executive, struggling to get along with Corky Winterset, his white girlfriend, who holds him in "constant suspicion of machismo."

Walker DuPree, Hal's former roommate, is wrestling with his mixed racial heritage while trying to avoid marriage to his persistent black girlfriend, Sadie Broom.

Dr. Emmett Mercy, self-help guru and author of Blactualization: Everyday Strategies for Reconnecting with Your Authentic African-American Self, is obsessed with gaining fame and fortune--at any cost. Meanwhile, his wife LaTonya shares a secret, sordid history with Hal.

The story moves from New York to Paris, from Amsterdam to Craven, Delaware, finally culminating on the eve of one of the defining events of our time: the verdict in O.J. Simpson's criminal trial. Using the public spectacle of the celebrated murder case in counterpoint to the private lives of his characters, Jake Lamar--one of America's most original writers--paints
a stunning portrait of a society grappling with fundamental problems of race and sex, identity and justice.