Motown Man

In Bob Campbell’s debut novel, we are presented with Bradley Cunningham a hard-working, dependable, loving man and capable automotive engineer. His focus, like so many of his fellow Midwestern workers and relations, has been work and helping to preserve a withering way of life in his Midwest industrial town. Bradley has done so rather than grapple with the meaning of his black identity. As if he had a choice. When Bradley meets and romances the woman of his dreams, he is drawn into a collective courage to challenge conventions of society that has used black identity to dehumanize others for their own gain. She falls for Bradley’s charms and, together, they look to build a new life in a faded factory town rife with veiled racial tension, marked uncertainty, and on the edge of losing its identity. But to his younger brother, James, their relationship is a fool’s errand. During an unseasonably cold week in November 1991, the true value of their bonds are revealed and hardened.