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ALBERT SEARS by Millen Brand

ALBERT SEARS

By

Pub Date: July 6th, 1947
Publisher: Simon & Schuster

A far cry from The Outward Room -- here is a story of a father and son, the boy illegitimate and smarting under the schoolmate taunts, the father a man who has won precarious success by permitting slightly shady practice. But the time comes in a real estate deal when he can't quite stomach it and tips off the man who is being ""done"" and brings down on his own and his associates' heads, results he had not anticipated. For Miller, merciless in his own determination to ruin those who fooled him, uses the readily fanned virus of race hate to upset a whole community (Jersey City). He imports Negroes into the house he has bought, planning to oust them when the results are achieved, and the neighborhood ruined. But he has on his hands one Negro family, the Manhursts, who see the issue in larger terms, and for the principle of the thing, refuse to move again and stand out alone against the hate, the violence, the prejudice, the hysteria generated. Into this situation, Albert Sears and his son find themselves thrust. And through it they find some measure of mutual respect and understanding. But the story turns into a study of mob violence in the North today, convincingly set forth, but without solution.