“LONG DIVISION”
Would you change the future of Mississippi even if it meant never
falling in love with girl you were destined to marry?
14 year-old City Coldson will do anything to make Shalaya Crump
love him … including traveling 26 years into the future, stealing a
lap top and jetting 21 years into the past to fight the Klan during
Freedom Summer.
Set in the coastal community of Melahatchie, Mississippi in March 1985,
City and Shalaya Crump travel to March 2011 via a time portal
in the woods. There, they meet a mysterious young rapper named Baize who
has lost her parents in Hurricane Katrina. City steals Baize’s lap top
and cell phone and takes them back to 1985.
The following day, Shalaya Crump and City meet another worn down
time-traveler from 1964 named Jewish Evan Altshuler. Evan is desperate
to protect his family against the Klu Klux Klan during Freedom Summer.
He convinces Shalaya Crump that he can help her find her parents and her
future self if she brings the lap top computer back to 1964.
Unexpectedly, City and Shalaya Crump are separated, with Shalaya Crump
stuck in 1964 and City stuck in 2011. Can they find each other? How will their
time apart change them? In their wanderings back and forward through time, much
is revealed about segregation, Freedom Summer, the destruction of Hurricane Katrina,
the Gulf Oil spill and the limits of technology and love. Far more, however, is revealed about City’s relationship with Baize and the power of writing and revising Mississippi and its character(s).
Chapter 1 — “Special”
I didn’t have a girlfriend halfway through 8th grade and it wasn’t because I had wider hips than Lisa Louis or because I hated the smell of deodorant or because I treated my blue sweat rag like that white boy, Linus, treated his blanket. It wasn’t even because Principal Jankins was heard over the intercom whispering to his wife, Ms. Dawsin-Jankins, that the back of my head was so flat it made Sister Raphael’s booty look round. I never had a girlfriend because the last time I saw Shalaya Crump, she told me that she could love me if I helped her change the future … in a special way.
Shalaya Crump lived in Melahatchie, Mississippi across the street from Mama Lara’s house. My problem was that none of the 8th, 9th and 10th grade girls who liked me wore fake Air Jordans with low socks or knew how to be funny when you didn’t expect it or had those sleepy, sunken eyes like Shalaya Crump. You never really knew what Shalaya Crump was gonna say and she always looked like she knew more than everybody around her, even more than the oldest grown-ups who acted like they knew more than Yoda’s daddy.
But really, the coolest thing about Shalaya Crump was that she made me feel like it was okay not to know stuff. She always asked these hard questions about the future but she didn’t treat me like dookie chunks when I didn’t get it right. It’s hard to explain if you haven’t ever been around someone whose not like that, but no one else in my whole life made me feel like it was okay not to know stuff like Shalaya Crump did …
Coming soon (maybe) from Penguin/Putnam!
How good are you at LONG DIVISION?
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