David Hammond

David Hammond is the main character and first person narrator of the novel. This means that his distinct way of seeing and experiencing the world dictates the novel’s central conflicts, stakes, and themes. In the narrative present, David is 22 years old. He lives “back at home with [his] mother, just south of Columbia University, in those blocks between 100th and 110th where the Upper West Side starts its softening into Morningside Heights” (10). Two years prior, David “flunked out of college after learning” that his girlfriend was pregnant and he “would soon become a father” (7). Shortly thereafter, he got a job as “a private tutor” for a young boy named Thadd Whitlock (7). He is still tutoring for Thadd at the novel’s start. Then one day, Thadd’s mother Beverly Whitlock suggests that he start working for a young Black Senator’s presidential campaign and David accepts...