Novel
Exile Blues
A Novel
- Publisher
- Baraka Books
- Published
- November 2019
- Pages
- 380
- Price
- $24.95
- ISBN
- 9781771862004
- Language
- English
On the publisher’s site (opens in a new tab) In bookstores (opens in a new tab)
—George Elliott Clarke, 7th Parliamentary Poet Laureate (2016 & 2017)
When Preston Downs, Jr., aka Prez, slides down the emergency chute onto the frozen tarmac at the Montreal airport, little does he know that never would he return home to Washington D.C. or to his adopted city, Chicago. Events had sped by after a dust-up with the Chicago police. With a new name and papers, he finds himself in a foreign city where people speak French and life is douce compared to the one he fled.
Son of a World War II vet, Prez grows up in the 50s in D.C., a segregated Southern city, and learns early that black lives don’t matter. As a leader in the streets, his journey from boy to man means acquiring fighting skills to lead and unify long before losing his virginity. Smart and skeptical, but with a code of ethics, he, like every black kid, wants to be Malcolm, Martin or at least a “soul brother,” which inspires fear among the powers that be.
Spotted while an A student at Howard University in 1964, Prez is invited to do an interdisciplinary course with field work on Civil Rights in Chicago, a city as divided as Gettysburg was a hundred years earlier. Faced with police-state conditions, dubious armed gangs, spies and provocateurs, Prez and the young women and men he works with are propelled into a head-on fight with police.
James Baldwin wrote that the blues began “on the auction block,” others say it started with their kidnapping from Africa. Prez was born in exile, with the blues.
Only someone who has lived through that period can write an enthralling and passionate story like Exile Blues. Gary Freeman has done so with insight and sensitivity.
A Novel Inspired by True Events
Description from the publisher Baraka Books, seen in October 2026 · Source ↗
From Baraka Books
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It’s All Coming Back to Me Now Jean-Michel Fortier
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Fragile Like a Bomb Catherine Fred Lavarenne
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The Guilt Trippers Philippe Mineau
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Northern Girls Michelle Willms
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Between the Island and the Turtle Karine Rosso
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All Kidding Aside Jean-Christophe Réhel
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Dobryd Ann Charney
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Tunes for Dancing Bears Irena Karafilly
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Eyes Have Seen Fred Anderson
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Saints Rest Luke Francis Beirne
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My Thievery of the People Leila Marshy
