the center of John Wideman's Atwork is the issue of race: what it means to be black in America. Sent for You Yesterday, the third volume of The Homewood Trilogy, weaves a rich tapestry exploring family, community, and culture, with the issue of race a striking part of the design.

Characters grapple with the social and personal tensions of race, striving to understand their own identities and the cultural history which has affected them. As in life, the people in the novel come in varying shades, from Brother, an albino, to his lover, Samantha, reminiscent of a Zulu woman in stance and color. Wideman encapsulates the tension between black and white in the character of Junebug, the son of Brother and Samantha, who dies in a kerosene fire, perhaps pushed by his black brothers and sisters. "People ain't easy to see," says Carl French (himself a...