Witness to a lynching in 1946, Lonnie is compelled to understand the brutal event and investigate his own culpability. Set in Georgia and drawn from real events, Anthony Grooms imagines his story from the perspectives of both the victims and the perpetrators. The Vain Conversation depicts a conversation in which all Americans must be engaged. A foreword is provided by American poet, painter, and novelist Clarence Major. An afterward is written by T. Geronimo Johnson, the bestselling author of Welcome to Braggsville and Hold It 'Til It Hurts.
Anthony Grooms is the author of Bombingham and Trouble No More: Stories, both winners of the Lillian Smith Book Award for fiction. Born in Charlottesville, Virginia, he has taught writing and American literature at universities in Ghana and Sweden and, since 1994, at Kennesaw State University in Georgia.
An incisive, gripping, and empathetic novel." - Kirkus Reviews [starred review]
In a preview of the book, New York Times best-selling author Ron Rash noted, "The Vain Conversation vividly evokes the horrors of American racism, but [Anthony Grooms] never denies the humanity of his characters, whether black or white, young or old. With complexity, satire, and sometimes levity, he [Grooms] explores what it means to redeem, as well as to be redeemed, on the issues of America's race violence and speaks to the broader issues of oppression and violence everywhere. That Grooms' incisive, gripping, and empathetic novel dares to probe beneath the humiliations, customs, and fears that sustain injustice implies that our seemingly eternal conversation on race, to which the title refers, may not be as vain as it often seems.
