Fortunate Son: A Novel
Walter Mosley
Language: English
Pages: 313
ISBN: 0316066281
Format: PDF / Kindle (mobi) / ePub
In spite of remarkable differences, Tommy and Eric are as close as brothers. Tommy, a delicate black boy, is cursed with health problems and drawn to trouble more often than not. Eric is a Nordic Adonis, graced by a seemingly endless supply of good fortune. When tragedy rips their makeshift family apart, the two boys are set on courses that diverge astonishingly. In a riveting tale of resilience and redemption that traces their parallel lives, Tommy and Eric ultimately reunite after years apart and draw on their childhood bond as they confront together the forces that threaten to destroy them.
right here undah yo’ roof?” “She . . . I, I wanted her to go to the hospital,” Dr. Nolan whispered. “I tried to convince her.” Elton stood up and so did Madeline. Ahn kissed Thomas and whispered, “You remember what I told you about running, running.” Dr. Nolan knelt down and hugged Thomas hard. “I love you, Tommy,” he said for the first time that Thomas could remember. “That’s enough now,” Elton said, and Thomas found himself being dragged from the house and out to a shiny green car that
darkness, and the sadness in his chest subsided. “I’m okay now,” he told his burly friend. “Yeh,” Bruno said, “but now we got the hall pass.” He held up a wooden board that was about a foot long and half that in width. It was painted bright orange, with the number 12 written on it in iridescent blue. “That means we don’t have to go back to class,” Bruno said. “We could go to the nurse’s office an’ hang out.” Thomas didn’t want to go back to the room of sunlight and laughter. “Do we have to
Branwyn felt about people, she could give everything inside her to you even if you weren’t her first choice or even somebody she could love.” “Were we people she loved?” Eric asked. He’d forgotten about Christie by then. “I think so,” his father said. “It wasn’t hard with Branwyn like it was with other women.” “What do you mean?” Eric asked softly. “Other women I’d known wanted something you couldn’t see or touch or even say. They called it love, but it was more like a game the way I saw it.
said. “I thought about it for a long time after Eric told me. You grabbed the wheel and ran off the road. You expected to die along with him. He was trying to destroy you like he did everybody else, and you grabbed him so that he’d go with you.” Raela was gazing directly into Thomas’s eyes. He felt a greater intimacy with her than he’d ever experienced before. It was a terrible intimacy, a frightening knowledge. “I loved him in a way,” she said. “He made me the most important person in his
leave. Branwyn always hesitated. She would have happily spent the whole night sleeping in a chair next to her baby. Then in the morning she could be the first thing he saw. One evening, noticing the new mother linger at the unit door, Minas offered to walk Branwyn to her car. “Oh, I don’t have a car, Doctor,” she said. “I get the bus down on Olympic.” The dark-skinned Negro woman had a beautiful smile and nearly transparent gray eyes. “Well, then let me drive you,” the doctor offered. “Oh,