A Life for a Life: A Novel

From the acclaimed author of Satisfied with Nothin comes a searing and unsparing story of the unlikely bond between an African-American father and the teenager who killed his son, a tale of violent self-destruction reclaimed by the inexhaustible power of love and forgiveness. <P> In A Life for a Life, Ernest Hill explores the volatile emotional terrain of a black youths coming of age in rural Louisiana. When a local drug dealer threatens to kill DRay Reids kid brother unless he comes up with $100 within an hour, DRay decides to hold up a convenience store in a nearby town. The young clerk at the cash register attempts to foil the robbery and in the scuffle DRay shoots and kills him. What follows is an absorbing drama in which DRay becomes a fugitive with a lengthening resume of violent crime. Yet it is ultimately in the person of Henry Earl, the slain boys father, that DRay sees his future. When he is forced to reckon with his destruction of the boys family, DRay finds that Henry Earl is his only advocate and the person who will ask of him what no one, not even his family, had ever asked before. <P> A Life for a Life

Author: Ernest Hill

Language: English

Binding: Hardcover

Pages: 240

Publisher: Simon & Schuster

Publication Date: 1998-08-18