Book Event: Bill Fletcher Jr
Date and Time
Nov 18, 2018 5:00 pm
Location
450K
450 K St NW, Washington, District of Columbia, 20001
Nov 18, 2018 5:00 pm
450K
Please join Busboys and Poets as we welcome award-winning journalist and lifelong social justice advocate Bill Fletcher, Jr. for the launch of his first work of fiction: The Man Who Fell From the Sky. Set within a Cape Verdean American community undergoing a transformation of its own consciousness, Fletcher’s crime novel dives deep into two timely questions: Is revenge ever a moral form of justice, and when does silence become complicity as criminal acts are committed before your own eyes?
In 1970, a sniper’s bullet shocks the sleepy Cape Cod village of Osterville. David Gomes, a young reporter for the Cape & Islands Gazette covers the story, thinking his reporting might lead to a job with a major metropolitan newspaper. With protests against the Viet Nam war and the rise of the Black Panthers roiling the county, the murder investigation becomes deeply personal when Gomes, a Cape Verdean American, encounters the smoldering racial antagonism between the descendants of Cape Verde and African-Americans, as well as the deep-seated hatred toward all people of African descent among members of the white community.
Gomes soon learns that investigating a murder can put him in the cross-hairs of a cold-blooded killer. It’s a dangerous place for the young reporter as he peels away layers of family history in his quest to discover the motive behind a savage act of murder, and comes to understand a complicated, contradictory history of his own people.
Bill Fletcher Jr., the author of "They're Bankrupting Us!" (Beacon Press, 2012) is a long-time racial-justice, labor, and international activist, scholar, and author. He has been involved in the labor movement for decades and is a widely known speaker and writer in print and on radio, television, and the Web. He has served in leadership positions with many prominent union and labor organizations, including the AFL-CIO and the Service Employees International Union. Fletcher is currently the director of field services for the American Federation of Government Employees.
