The Gettin' Place — Susan Straight

Acclaimed novelist Susan Straight returns to the fictional town of Rio Seco, California, in her most powerful book to date. Framed by two race riots -- the little-known Tulsa riots of the 1920s, in which white Tulsa burned down the town's black enclave, and the notorious L.A. riots of 1992 -- The Gettin Place brilliantly tells a story of violence in America and its effect on three generations of the Thompson family. As moving and richly populated as I Been in Sorrow's Kitchen and Licked Out All the Pots and Blacker Than a Thousand Midnights, this penetrating novel is a portrait of a family struggling to defend its turf in a changing world, and to hold on to the source from which they draw the tools for survival: the gettin place.