White Ravens’99/Canada/78467
Bell, William
 Zack
 Toronto: Doubleday Canada, 1998. 165pp
 ISBN 0-385-25711-2
 Interracial marriage - Search for identity - Grandfather - Prejudice - African slavery
 Zack’s adolescent discontent with life in his last year at school is compounded by a move from the middle
 of an exciting big city to a remote rural area. It is gradually assuaged when he takes on a school project
 that leads to historical detective work involving African freed-slave settlers and also gets romantically
 involved with a girl. His identity as the son of a black blues singer and a white Jewish historian was never
 an issue, but his new knowledge about the treatment of the former slaves leads him on a secret odyssey to
 meet his mother’s estranged father in Mississippi. In a taut and plausible plot, the first-person narrator
 makes decisions that help him to gain maturity and a better understanding of other people. While the
 family rift is left open in the end, Zack is now ready to face adulthood and pursue academic studies. Much
 ground is covered in this well-constructed novel, made especially readable by the witty, perceptive
 narrative tone. (14+)

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