Some two decades later, high-profile interracial nuptials in Oakland, California, become the occasion for a reunion between the now Reverend Vida and Lucius Clay, the fiery journalist she met in South Carolina. Within weeks of their re-meeting, Lucius is dispatched to cover Black church burnings--beginning with Lily's hometown in Texas.

Writer Hilton Als recently commented: "We need to wake up to the fact that America is not one story. It is many, many, many stories." American Blues offers no neat resolution. Instead, its timely story invites, as it tangles with, readers' own assumptions and complex experiences of race and gender in America.