Blues For Mister Charlie by James Baldwin [1964 FIRST PAPERBACK PRINTING]

Blues For Mister Charlie by James Baldwin

FIRST PAPERBACK EDITION [1964] DELL BOOKS

First printing / 1964. 

Small dell paperback in excellent condition.   Cover has shelf wear and some mild creasing but is otherwise excellent.  Book itself is unread and reads like new with some inevitable tanning to pages.   Top margin of title page has a very minor water stain.

In a small Southern town, a white man murders a black man, then throws his body in the weeds. With this act of violence--which is loosely based on the notorious 1955 killing of Emmett Till--James Baldwin launches an unsparing and at times agonizing probe of the wounds of race.

For where once a white storekeeper could have shot a boy like Richard Henry with impunity, times have changed. And centuries of brutality and fear, patronage and contempt, are about to erupt in a moment of truth as devastating as a shotgun blast.

In his award-winning play, Baldwin turns a murder and its aftermath into an inquest in which even the most well-intentioned whites are implicated--and in which even a killer receives his share of compassion.