Losing Absalom
Alexs Pate
Introduction by E. Ethelbert Miller

When Alexs Pate's groundbreaking debut novel, Losing Absalom, was first published in 1994, E. Ethelbert Miller said it "may just be as important as Baldwin's Go Tell It on the Mountain ." A decade later, Miller expands his earlier assessment in his introduction to this new edition:

"Every now and then a good book is like a good song, you start whistling it when you're walking down the street. That's how it's been with Alexs Pate's novel. It's a book that invites you into the home of a black family. Before folks were making movies like Soul Food , Pate was writing books that left a reader licking their fingers and looking for more. . . . Ten years ago I praised this book and said it might just be as important as Baldwin's Go Tell It on the Mountain . I still feel that way and even have a desire to shout it out."

Named Best First Novel by the Black Caucus of the ALA, winner of the Minnesota Book Award, and compared to the work of James Baldwin, August Wilson, and James Agee, Alexs Pate's debut novel "rings with a truth as immediate as body counts in the headlines, as enduring as a classic tragedy."— San Francisco Chronicle