Willie Black knew he had a father, even if he didn’t know where he was buried. It wasn’t like Artie Lee gave his son anything but his genes. He died when Willie was 15 months old, and Artie and Peggy never married. They couldn’t have, in the segregated commonwealth of Virginia in 1960. Then, in January of 2018, Artie Lee, dead almost 57 years, reinserts himself into his son’s life. Philomena … Slade calls Willie, the mixed-race night-cops reporter for the local daily rag, to her death bed to ask him a favor he can’t refuse: Keep Artie s grave clean. She’s been doing it after everybody else who knew him either died or chose to forget they ever knew Artie Lee. Willie Black finds his father’s final resting place in Evergreen, an abandoned cemetery on the east side of Richmond where full-grown trees and thickets obscure memorials to people who, like Artie Lee, are long-forgotten. Willie soon discovers that the almost-impenetrable wilderness of Evergreen is a metaphor for his search for Artie. Artie Lee, a saxophonist and race man who did not suffer bigots gladly, died in a car crash. Willie knew that. When he starts figuratively digging, though, he finds out more than he really wanted to know. Arthur Meeks and Archangel Bright, Artie’s friends back in the day, don t seem that eager to talk about him, but Willie keeps pumping them. Eventually, he’ll discover how a double-homicide at a Ku Klux Klan rally in 1960 connects with an auto wreck on a deserted road a year later. It’s not like Willie has plenty of extra time to unearth a story he might not even be able to write. In addition to covering the always-thriving Richmond crime scene, he’s now assigned by his newspaper’s most recent boy publisher to do a daily feature from the city’s past. Who can blame him if he starts mixing a little fiction with the history? As he tries to find out what happened to Artie Lee, Willie figures that, when it comes to reconnecting with his long-deceased father, late is better than never. When he digs up the truth, though, he’ll see that “never” might not have been so bad.
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If you ever worked at a newspaper, you knew a guy like Willie Black. Hard-nosed and obsessed when chasing a story. Hard-drinking whether he was on the hunt or not. More ex-wives, back-street lovers and one-night stands with other reporters than Tanya Tucker’s had hot meals.
A smartass who never knew when to shut up. To bosses, cops or pols. Might get him demoted from the capitol beat to night cops, but he was too good a reporter to fire.
Newsrooms used to be full of guys and gals like Willie. Back when print journalism was lively, vibrant and bawdy fun. Back before newspapers went the way of the buggy whip and the steam locomotive and newsrooms became dead zones of empty desks and survivors doing the jobs of four or five of the departed.
Willie’s old school, pushing 60 and too stubborn and scared to change. Along with last night’s booze, Willie oozes authenticity. Which is why Howard Owen’s most durable character is so compellingly believable, book after book, a tribute to the author’s own ink-stained career.
In Owen’s latest book, Evergreen, Willie’s latest obsessive story chase is his own legacy — the black father he never knew, killed in a one-car wreck on a back road when Willie was a toddler, leaving him to be raised by his white mother in the most redneck enclave in Richmond, Va. He grew up during the deeply segregated early 60’s, when it was illegal for whites and blacks to marry, the Klan was a lethal terror and a mixed-race child was a shameful thing.
Willie, a survivor who has learned to skate through both the white and black world, has never bothered to learn about his father. That changes when Philomena Slade, a dying aunt on his father’s side who Willie reveres like a grandmother, gives him a last request — keep his father’s grave clean, a task she has been performing for decades.
Willie’s father, Artie Black, a jazz sax player and proud black man, is buried in a graveyard called Evergreen. It’s a remote, nearly-forgotten place, a “colored” burial ground overgrown with brush and littered with toppled tombstones — except the graves of a dwindling number of souls who still have family members alive who keep them clean.
At first, Willie reluctantly honors his aunt’s request — but little more. Gradually, curiosity kicks in and he starts asking his mother about his father. Her answers skim the surface as she talks about being smitten by his looks, musical talent and charm, but offer little more.
He tracks down two of his father’s running buddies — old men now who talk about deep friendship and fun times, but also darkly allude to his father’s penchant for trouble and his refusal to bow down to the white man, a fatal flaw in those times.
Willie can smell a story, but every time he pushes a little harder, the old men clam up. There’s a buried secret there and Willie is determined to dig it up, a quest that uncovers murders, betrayal, racist cops, Klansmen and the descendants of men with blood on their hands that want to shut Willie down.
He’s always been willing to pay the price for the truth he seeks. But this time, the cost includes pain and suffering for those Willie loves.