EXCLUSIVE book excerpt: FROM CAPE TOWN WITH LOVE (May 18, 2010/Atria)

I can't believe it, but in May we'll be publishing our third novel in our Tennyson Hardwick mystery series, From Cape Town with Love. These are the books I'm co-authoring with my husband, Steven Barnes, in partnership with actor Blair Underwood.

This book literally begins where 2008's NAACP Image Award-winning In the Night of the Heat left off, so there's plenty of time to catch up...but all of these books are written so that first-time readers can follow them too!

Before we post the excerpt, here's what other writers are saying about From Cape Town with Love:

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"Bold, sexy and engaging, From Cape Town with Love is an amazing novel penned by extremely talented storytellers! Tennyson Hardwick continues to be one of the most superb characters in contemporary literature."

--Zane, New York Times bestselling author of Total Eclipse of the Heart, executive producer and screenwriter, Cinemax Original Series "Zane's Sex Chronicles."

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"I've been a fan of the Tennyson Hardwick series since Casanegra--and Ten is back and better than ever. From Cape Town with Love has something for everyone: the trademark sex and sizzle, and a nod to James Bond that makes this a high-octane thrill ride. Underwood, Barnes and Due don't disappoint. If you like great fiction penned by superb writers and brilliant storytellers, get onboard!"

--Eric Jerome Dickey, New York Times bestselling author of Resurrecting Midnight and Dying for Revenge.

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"Heart-stopping and crazy sexy, From Cape Town with Love will keep your pulse pounding through the night. Tennyson Hardwick is a hero for the 21st Century. Easy Rawlins, say hello to James Bond!"

--Paul Levine, author of Illegal

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Here's your sneak peek!

FROM CAPE TOWN WITH LOVE

Prologue

They called themselves the Three R's: R.J., Ramirez and Reiter. Reiter was female, but not exactly the nurturing kind. I was sitting at a table in a cold, windowless room, in the worst pain in my life. I'd been in the same chair for hours.

Sitting upright wasn't easy because of the pain.

R.J. stood over me with a folder. He did most of the talking.

"The FBI is writing a book on you as we speak,” R.J. said. “Usually that’s the bad news. But in your case, that’s the good news.”

I couldn’t resist. “Then what’s the bad news?”

“You seen that TV show…? What’s the name?” R.J. asked Ramirez and Reiter.

“What show?” Reiter said.

At first, I thought he was talking about my old series, Homeland. I’d played an FBI agent working with the Department of Homeland Security. But I was as wrong as I could be.

R.J. snapped his fingers. “Without a Trace,” he said. “It’s about people who’ve disappeared, right? One day they’re here, bam, they’re gone. That’s a fascinating show.”

There was wildness in his eyes.

“You ever heard of the Patriot Act?” R.J. asked me.

I suddenly realized how hungry I was. I wondered again if it was day or night.

“That’s got nothing to do with me,” I said. I wanted to force him to say what he was hinting at. “I’m not a terrorist.”

“But you’re an interesting guy,” R.J. said.

“Fascinating guy,” Ramirez agreed in a sing-song.

R.J. went on. “And if we decide we want to talk to you for a while, get to know you better, we can keep you around as long as we need to.”

“But nobody wants that,” R.J. said.

“Pain in the ass,” Reiter said.

Cold, steel reality unfolded in my head: I was in an interrogation room in an unknown location. My body felt butchered. I had been promised a long stretch in prison. I had just lost my oldest friend. I had barely survived the night, and a man had died at my hands.

No. Why mince words? I had killed a man. For the first time in my life.

I wondered how many people R.J., Ramirez and Reiter had killed between them, or what measures they were willing to take when they wanted information. I didn’t get along with most cops already—but they weren’t cops, or anything like it.

I wished they were. I understood the rules with cops. There were no rules at all now.

****

ONE

Seven months earlier

November 5, 2008

South Africa

April Forrest's eyes widened. “Ten…what happened to your face?”

In the bosom of beauty, ugly comes as a shock. The swelling and bruises across my face made me look like I’d just been attacked by a prison gang. Might as well have been—although it was just one man. In the swamp.

When April left Los Angeles to teach in South Africa for six months, she’d left me too. We had passed the one-year milestone right before she changed her mind about us, and an ocean and ten thousand miles had suddenly seemed like a small toll to see her again. I wanted to know what had scared her off—but maybe it was written all over my face.

“Long story,” I said. “I tried, but I couldn’t find flowers this late. May I come in?”

Apparently, long story wasn’t enough to get the door open any wider. April was lithe and fine, with skin the color of ginger.

She was living in a tiny cinderblock house on a street of modest but well-kept homes in a middle-class section of Soweto, outside of Johannesburg. In the bright light from the porch, I saw her jaw shift with uncertainty. Her delicate chin and gently swaying braids, adorned with regal white beads at the ends, reminded me why some men could be driven to beg.

Two or three loose dogs I’d seen outside of the gate were barking at me from the unlighted street. Two yipped harmlessly, but one sounded like thunder. A week before, I’d killed a German shepherd in the Florida swamp. The memory of the dog’s last yelp, and his master's last labored breath, still iced my blood.

“You look like you almost got murdered, Ten. What happened?”

“The T.D. Jackson case.” My investigation into the death of football star T.D. Jackson had taken me places that were hard to put into words. Dad had told me that an LAPD officer who had been through my ordeal might have been considered like an OIS, Officer Involved Shooting, and sent to counseling. “Like I said, April… long story.”

April’s look told me that I was failing my first test since our breakup. In her place, I might close the door on me. Dying hope flashed hot in my chest. I knew it, then: I shouldn’t have come to see April without calling her first, like my father and Chela told me before I left.

“Ten, I can’t…I’m not alone.”

She’s already with somebody else? A foreign rage tightened the back of my neck. I didn’t know if was more pissed at her for moving on, or at me for flying across the world to witness her new life up close.

When an older woman appeared behind April in the doorway, I wanted to hug her. April was boarding, so she was living with her hostess! The woman looked about fifty-five, but her skin was so smooth that she might have been ten or fifteen years older. Bright silver hair framed her forehead beneath her colorful head scarf. The slope of her nose and sharp cheekbones reminded me of Alice. Beauty, timeless. Another woman. A different time. Despite the severity of her frown. the stranger’s face forced me to stare.

“I’m sorry it’s so late, Mrs. Kunene,” April apologized. A faint living room light was on, but the woman might have been asleep. It was ten p.m. in Johannesburg; late for an unannounced visitor. I hadn’t thought about the hour when I jumped into the taxi at the airport and told the driver to go to the address April had given me. A lot had changed since the last time I was in South Africa.

The streets were so dark, I had no idea how the driver found his way.

“This is my friend, Tennyson. From the U.S.”

April said friend as if it was the whole story. I could barely smile for the hostess—not that a smile would have helped my face. Mrs. Kunene looked like she was trying to decide if she should call the police right then, or wait for me to look at her the wrong way.

After a twenty-two-hour flight via Amsterdam, I couldn’t fake pleasantries with a hostile stranger. “Come away with me for a long weekend,” I said to April's ear, not quite a whisper. I’d planned a more elegant approach, but the sight of April’s face had drained my memory. My palms were damp, like my virgin friends used to say in high school.

April touched her ear, coaxing away a strand of hair. “Ten…slow down…”

A broad-shouldered man with snowy white hair appeared next, wearing only his slacks, roused from bed. Mr. Kunene might be my father's age, but his motion was agile and his face was as smooth as his wife's.

“April, this man is your friend?" he said. "He looks like a tsotsi!”

I admired his lyrical accent despite the insult: He'd just said I looked like a gangster.

April planted her foot in the doorway to keep the door from slamming in my face. Her foot was as firm as her voice was gentle: “Yes, yes, he’s a good friend. It’s all right.”

“Is he drunk?” Mrs. Kunene called, stepping back. The rolled R’s in the woman’s accent were music. She made drunk sound like a state to aspire to.

“Sir and madam, I am not drunk,” I said. “Please accept my apologies for stopping by so late. I have to talk to April right away.” When they heard my reasonableness, and my American accent, some of the alarm left their eyes.

I pointed out the gate, where the tattered taxi that had brought me waited—a dingy gray VW Citi Golf that had once been white. One of the back tail lights was missing, and the other glowed dimly. The driver sat inside, awaiting my verdict. The yipping dogs still barked, but the larger one had moved on. April saw the taxi and realized delays were costing me.

“I’ll be right here on the porch,” April said to her hosts, and slipped outside before they could object. The white curtains fluttered at the window as they watched us.

On the porch, I had an impulse to pull April close—but I followed her lead and kept a two-foot distance. If I tried to touch her and she flinched away, no words would rescue us.

“Sorry, but she’s a minister,” April explained, hushed. “They're strict with boarders.”

Good. I hoped they ran the house like a damn nunnery. “I need a face-to-face conversation with you,” I said.

April’s eyes fell away, and my throat burned. A month ago, April would have fussed over my bruises, planting her soft lips on mine.

“Let me take you somewhere beautiful,” I said. “Don’t we deserve time, April?”

“Yes, but…I’m working until Saturday.”

“Make up an excuse.”

“Lying comes easier to some people, Ten.” No irony or malice; just a fact. And she was right. If I’m not careful, lying is my nature.

“Then meet me for coffee tomorrow.” The exhaustion shredding my voice must have sounded like desperation, but I hadn’t had a good night’s sleep in a week. “Tell me when you have a break, and I’ll come pick you up.”

Silence again. I’d envisioned myself staying with April—yeah, right—so I didn’t have a reservation at a hotel. Another hassle waited, and the day was already ending on a sour note.

My driver, Sipho, was watching me through his open driver’s side window, eager to see me give him our signal: thumbs up if he could drive away, thumbs down if he should wait.

When I gave Sipho the thumbs-down, I heard him click his teeth with disgust. “Eish! No woman wants the nice guy!” he called from his window, repeating his mantra from our ride.

When I’d told Sipho the story of how April left the States to teach and then broke up with me by telephone, he’d let out a shout as if she’d shot me. A rich man like you, treated this way by a woman! Maybe he was merely angling for a tip, but he was my only friend that night.

I was getting mad, and so far anger had nothing to do with April and me. I hoped I wouldn’t have to scorch April in those flames. Neither of us would salvage anything from that.

“April, if you’re through with me, help me wrap my head around it.”

April touched my forehead, just above a bruise, and her touch extinguished my anger. “Where would we go?” she said. “If I get the days off.”

I stepped toward April and cradled her cheeks with my palms. Her chin sank against the heels of my hands. For a precious few seconds, she trusted me to hold her up.

I did not try to kiss her. Holding her face was enough.

“I know the perfect place,” I said.

Cape Town might be our last chance.

Copyright © 2010 by Trabajando, Inc., Tananarive Due and Steven Barnes

Apps & the Art of Relaxation

A few months ago, my sister Lydia gifted me with an iPhone. While I'm not thrilled with the cost of keeping it up and running, my relationship with my iPhone has become so strong that I often joke that it is unwholesome. I literally sleep with my iPhone under my pillow at night.

Why? Originally, it was to feed my bedtime audio book habit, but I can use my old iPod classic for that. Instead, I've grown more and more dependent on my iPhone apps to relax me and help me sleep. During a recent trip to my parents’ house, sleeping in my mother's room with several interruptions a night because she was ill, I used hypnosis and relaxation apps to help me fall right back to sleep.

2009 was a stressful year for me, and insomnia has been an ongoing problem in years past, so I searched through reviews to find the apps that users thought were the most helpful. And I’m cheap—so I weigh the decision to spend even three bucks very carefully.

I have a few apps that I love so much that I want to share them. I'm also curious about which relaxation apps work for you. They also work for iPod Touch, which may even be a better choice—because there’s nothing less relaxing than a phone call in the middle of your relaxation.

Here are my favorites:

RELAX WITH ANDREW JOHNSON ($2.99 version / Free Lite version)

Maybe it’s the accent (Johnson is a hypnotherapist from Scotland), but his apps conk me out. I’ve never had traditional hypnotherapy, and I don’t necessarily feel like I’m in a “trance,” but his lulling voice always does the job. I use this one when I need a quick nap, or when I have a moment to meditate during a stressful day.

Hint: With Johnson’s apps, use the “controls” to program how long you want the induction to be (I suggest using the long induction) and whether you want to sleep or wake afterward. The first times I used it, I didn’t realize I could control whether or not he wakes me up, and I was in blissful slumber when I heard this loud voice saying “WAKE UP!” as if he was standing over me. Great if you need to get up, but not so much at night. It’s not an alarm clock, but you can also set the time you want to wake up. (I haven’t used this function, though.)

There is also a Free RELAX WITH ANDREW JOHNSON LITE. (I got the paid version before I knew about it, so I don’t know the difference.)
*****

DEEP SLEEP WITH ANDREW JOHNSON ($2.99)

Ahhhh…sleep! I have used this app several times, but I have to admit I have no idea what Johnson says after the induction, or only part of the induction. Why? I’m ASLEEP! I’ve never heard his Relax app all the way through either. I hope he isn’t planting messages that I should run naked through my neighborhood, but I’ll probably never know.
*****

POSITIVITY WITH ANDREW JOHNSON ($2.99)

Sometimes you just need a voice in your ear to remind you that YOU are in control. For me, when the answer isn’t a nap or a good night’s sleep, the Positivity app is the perfect break from the day to remind me to keep a positive outlook. It really works for me.
*****

BRAINWAVE ALTERED STATES (.99)

There is no voice induction in this app, just what’s called “binaural tones” that are designed to trigger mental states in the listener. There is also soothing background noise like ocean waves or thunderstorm, and you use the controls to set the volume on the tones, volume for the background noise, or how long you want the session to last.

I have meditated for years, on and off, and I use this app when I want to do straight meditation. The different tones are named “Chakra Meditation,” “Euphoric Bliss,” “Lucid Dreaming,” etc. This app probably would work better for someone who has some experience with meditation. My husband, Steve, meditates with stillness, which is probably best—but sometimes I need help shutting down my thoughts. This app helps do the trick.
*****

AMBIANCE (.99 version / free Lite version)

If sound effects are your thing, whether or not you want to use them for relaxation, Ambiance is a terrific app that’s like an app store unto itself. There are more than 3,000 5-star reviews for this app on iTunes, and for good reason: It’s an amazing effects library. For 99 cents, you install the app and then browse for sounds you want, which are updated frequently. You only download the sounds you want to your phone, but you can sample them all.

My personal library is pretty standard so far: “Canadian geese,” “English country birds,” “Evening waves,” “Seagulls,” “Gyuto Monks Tantric Choir,” etc. But new updates include “Riding through a Victorian Street,” “Forest Fires,” “Bees,” etc.

All I can say is: Different strokes for different folks. I’m not sure why someone would want to listen to combat sounds or a washing machine spin cycle, but I saw reviewers with infants who had great luck getting their kids to sleep with some of the repetitious sounds.

There is also AMBIANCE LITE, which is free—but again, I don’t know the difference. You might want to check out the free version to see what you think.
*****

Of course, iPhone apps aren’t my only tools for dealing with life’s challenges and stress: There’s prayer, which I still do the old-fashioned way. (Although I’m sure there are apps for that!)

And I’m very lucky to be married to a life coach, Steven Barnes, who has a lot of terrific tools for tackling life on his website at www.DiamondHour.com Steve is the one who taught me how to meditate with his Heartbeat Meditation, which I use every time I meditate by feeling for my pulse in my fingertips. Ideally, Steve suggests listening to your heartbeat without touching your fingertips or feeling your pulse, but I know I’m working toward stillness when I can relax into my pulse. When I’m trying to still my active mind, my pulse is the perfect anchor.

I often combine Steve’s Heartbeat Meditation with the BRAINWAVE ALTERED STATES and AMBIANCE apps to create an even more cleansing experience.

Between my husband and my iPhone apps, I survived 2009—and I’m ready for everything 2010 has in store. Bring it on!

Celebrating our friend E. Lynn Harris

CAPTION: Posing with E. Lynn Harris and my mother, Patricia Stephens Due, at Books & Books in Miami.

OK…send prayers up. I'm off to my meeting with one of Hollywood's most powerful ladies. Got the suit on and the new scent I purchased yesterday and I'm ready for my close up.

--E. Lynn Harris’s last Facebook update to 3,800 friends and readers,
posted the day he died


When I think of E. Lynn Harris, who died on July 23, this is the moment I remember: I’m walking in a sea of humanity in Manhattan, hitting a crosswalk as two waves prepare to meet from opposite sides. There, dead-center in my path in a bright crimson jacket, walks E. Lynn Harris—with a grin for miles. That is my mind’s snapshot of Everett Lynn Harris, New York Times bestselling author, trailblazer and stellar friend. The prince of the city, afloat on effervescence, a warm face in a sea of strangers.

E. Lynn, how do I count the ways? You gave us all so much. Did you live your life to the marrow because you knew you would only be visiting with us for so short a time?

Friday, Sept. 25, is E. Lynn Harris day, and many of us whose lives were touched by E. Lynn Harris’s work and spirit want to help him fulfill one of his last unrealized dreams: E. Lynn wanted to be #1 on the New York Times bestseller list. He had ten New York Times bestsellers—remarkable for a black male writer—but he never hit #1.

With his posthumous novel MAMA DEAREST, we hope to help make that happen. I will join writers nationwide to participate in E. Lynn Harris Day Friday. I will appear at 7 p.m. Friday, Sept. 25, at ESO WON BOOKS, 4311 Degnan Boulevard in Los Angeles. (For more information, call 323-490-1048). A complete list of E. Lynn Harris Day events can be found at www.elynnharris.com/tour.htm.

Nationwide this week, authors like Eric Jerome Dickey, Victoria Christopher Murray, Tina McElory Ansa, RM Johnson and others have been appearing in Atlanta, New York, Philadelphia, Washington, D.C., New Orleans, Dallas, San Francisco, and other cities.

*****

In both fiction and in life, E. Lynn Harris was a giant. In the world of African-American fiction in particular—those tightly-knit networks of book clubs, readers and writers—a mighty tree has fallen, shaking our forest floor.

E. Lynn tried to clear the path for the rest of us.

Read the remembrances on the news and the internet, and person after person cities E. Lynn Harris’s generosity, whether or not they knew him personally. He offered grace to everyone in his presence. He embraced the spirit of entrepreneurship while enchanting readers with his novels again and again. But it wasn’t just his novels readers fell in love with: Reader after reader remarks that they feel like they knew him, that he was a member of their family.

To me, what is most remarkable about his ascent is the unlikely way in which it came about. The black community is not unique in its history of homophobia, but homosexuality was far from a comfortable topic in black America when E. Lynn began publishing.

Then E. Lynn Harris introduced a sexually conflicted character named Raymond in his novel Invisible Life. He hauled self-published novels in the back seat of his trunk because he had a story to tell. He wrote from his heart, and his heart was so big that legions followed him.

E. Lynn Harris’s fiction told gay readers that they were not voiceless, nor were they alone. For straight readers, he opened the closet door and shined in a light. Gay or straight, readers loved him. He made his characters feel real, which our readers demand, and the author’s sweetness and love always shone through.

The proof is in the pictures: Reader after reader, me included, displayed photos of themselves posing with E. Lynn at a book signing. In city after city and town after town, E. Lynn Harris made his readers’ day. In his photos, his smile never faltered.

He was beloved.

No one ever forgot an E. Lynn Harris book-signing. He was a showman whose main act was being himself, a gentleman author in the truest sense. He wanted the last person in line to feel as cherished as the first person in line—and his lines were hundreds of readers long.

When I first started publishing, I was lucky enough to be seated next to E. Lynn Harris at a Black Expo at a convention center, where his line snaked as far as I could see. I was still shocked to be published in those days, and only a handful of readers knew who I was.
While E. Lynn Harris signed autograph after autograph, I watched the master at work.

He was personable. He looked into readers’ eyes. He was happy to stand up and pose for pictures. He was willing to sign a stack of books, no matter how large. If he was tired, he didn’t show it. Everyone left his table with a huge smile. Once in a while, Lynn looked up and addressed the waiting crowd: “This is a new writer, her name is Tananarive Due, and you have to read this novel--THE BETWEEN.”

Each time he did, three or four people bought a copy of my book.

And so the day went on.

In the years to come, he became my most consistent mentor. He had advice at every stage on the business end of publishing. Even if he was on book tour, it seemed that any email sent to E. Lynn was usually answered within the hour—if not immediately. (And this was in the days before Blackberries.) He once told me that he answered 200 reader emails a day!

My mother, Patricia Stephens Due, was my manager in the early part of my career, so she and E. Lynn ran into each other often on the book circuit. Once, she gave Lynn a mantel clock and pen holder styled with books—and when he later gave us a tour of his Chicago apartment, the clock was prominently displayed at the top of his desk. When we told him that we wanted to write a book about the civil rights movement, he got excited and encouraged us with instrumental advice. That book later became Freedom in the Family: A Mother-Daughter Memoir of the Fight for Civil Rights, which I co-authored with my mother.

E. Lynn told me he wanted me to make an appearance in Arkansas—and announced that he was going to fly me in and put me up in a hotel out of his pocket. “More people need to know you,” he said.

I wasn’t the only one, by far.

*****

In recent years, I had not seen E. Lynn Harris often—which was why it was so thrilling when we were both nominated for NAACP Image Awards this year, and I was able to give him a long-overdue hug at a party at CAA in February.

Even then, he was on the phone with our agent, taking care of late-night business. At the time, Lynn was on his tenth week on the New York Times bestseller list. Like me, it was his first NAACP Image Award nomination in a long while, and he was excited. (He first heard the news of the nomination from a friend, author Victoria Christopher Murray.)

Ironically, although he was in California on book tour, he had a conflict on awards night, so he wasn’t able to make it for the red carpet and awards ceremony. But he asked me and Steve to look after Brandon, a 21-year-old young man he’d adopted as his son. Brandon sat in our row, excited to see the likes of Will Smith on the stage. (When Brandon graduated from college in the spring, E. Lynn plastered Facebook with photos, bursting with pride.)

Although we were nominated in the Literature category for our collaboration IN THE NIGHT OF THE HEAT (co-authored with my husband, Steven Barnes, in partnership with actor Blair Underwood), I never felt any sense of competition with E. Lynn. (E. Lynn helped launch our Tennyson Hardwick mystery series with a blurb for CASANEGRA.)

He emailed me after he heard that we’d won: Congrats to you guys. I had a feeling you would win. You're a fabulous writer and your time on the list is coming. Thanks for looking after B. He texted me and the excited me was busting out of my phone.

We sent each other comments back and forth each other’s Facebook pages from time to time, but that email after the Image Awards is my last real correspondence with him.

Gracious, vintage E. Lynn Harris.

*****

A MIGHTY TREE

I was first introduced to E. Lynn Harris through Blanche Richardson, the longtime owner of Marcus Books in Oakland—the oldest black bookstore in the nation. At my first book signing in Oakland, she laid a stack of my first novel on a table with Post-Its listing several names: Terry McMillan. Octavia E. Butler. Tina McElroy Ansa. Bebe Moore Campbell. Walter Mosley. E. Lynn Harris.

I was blown away, so nervous that my hand practically shook as I signed the books. Blanche wanted to make sure I as properly introduced to the titans in black fiction.

I don’t know how my career would have caught any wind without independent black booksellers like Blanche, and our black bookstores are dying. The loss is incalculable.

Now, in the midst of ongoing hardship, has come a terrible blow. An unimaginable blow.

I heard about E. Lynn Harris’s death on Facebook, that chaotic village square that is rife with town criers when there is news to share. R.I.P. E. Lynn Harris, read several status updates from my friends, reminiscent of the R.I.P. Michael the weeks before.

This had to be an internet hoax! I steadfastly refused to believe it could be true.
In my mind, I had just talked to E. Lynn Harris the day before, because he had posted a giddy update from Los Angeles during a book tour stop.

On Thursday, I fired back a cyber pat on the back—Let’s all storm Hollywood together!!!—as did at least 70 of his other Facebook friends. A writer’s Facebook friends are a fascinating blend of complete strangers who read your books, current real-world friends, family, and people you haven’t seen since elementary school. They’re a supportive bunch. E. Lynn went into his meetings with the Facebook winds at his back.

As far as we were concerned, we had just talked to him and he was doing great.

I like to think that E. Lynn died happy.

By accounts I’ve heard, he had a great day of Hollywood meetings—which is, in itself, a kind of Hollywood ending. Hollywood is the writer’s last mountain, and E. Lynn might have felt that much closer to his dream of bringing his work to movie audiences.

He had optioned his works before, and he wrote screenplays and teleplays in addition to novels. According to a Facebook posting, he also had a Broadway show in the works. (He appeared on Broadway as the narrator of Dreamgirls in 2001, and later appeared in Love Letters to America.)

Actress Lela Rochon Fuqua posted a remembrance on his Facebook page: What a loss...what a talent. Wish we could have gotten one of those books made into film. Thank you! Thank you! for all that you have contributed to the arts. My prayers got out to your family. Rest my brother. Love, Lela

I remember him telling me how devastated he was when Aaliyah died in her 2001 plane crash, when he was left with the same sense of disbelief: But I was just talking to her!

E. Lynn, we were just talking to you.

The passage of days doesn’t make it any easier to believe that you are gone.

My Father's Oral History Mystery: Lyles Station and the 1857 "Round House Battle"

CAPTIONS: [Left] Black schoolchildren at the school at Lyles Station, circa late-1800s. (My great-grandmother may be one of the darker girls on the right.)

SOURCE: Lyles Station Historic Preservation Society.

[Right] Me posing at age 11: "My Own Roots"

**************

By 1977, Alex Haley’s Roots had swept the nation—and suddenly I was interested in knowing my family history. Had there been a Kunta Kinte in my family’s past? A Kizzy?

As a parent now, I can only imagine how happy my father was when his 11-year-old eldest daughter—whose biggest preoccupation was stealing his legal pads to write stories about kids on space ships and talking cats—approached him and said, “Dad, do you know any stories about our ancestors?”

My father’s face lit up. "Did I ever tell you about Lyles Station and the Battle of the Round House? It’s a story my grandmother told me, and her mother told her.”

The story she told my father about Lyles Station, Indiana, is recounted in the book I co-authored with my mother, Patricia Stephens Due: Freedom in the Family: A Mother-Daughter Memoir of the Fight for Civil Rights. (My great-grandmother in Indiana, Lydia Stewart Graham, died only three years later, in 1980, when she was 89.)

I was so enthralled by the story that I created a school project called “My Own Roots,” illustrated with my father’s drawings and family photographs, pictured above.

THE STORY MY FATHER TOLD ME

“In the 1850s, not long before the Civil War, a slave master in North Carolina decided to set his slaves free. He bought them a parcel of land in Indiana under his own name. Now these freed slaves had somewhere to go, land where they could build their own houses and start their own farms. So they packed up everything they owned and drove the wagon train from North Carolina to Indiana.

“When they arrived, they began to farm the land. They had bumper crops, better than they expected. In town they sold what they grew, so they were not only feeding themselves, but they were earning money. And they were so prosperous that they started attracting attention to themselves. The white farmers who lived around them started getting jealous. And this came at a time when a lot of folk in Indiana were putting pressure on the governor to make it a slave state. They started thinking, ‘Now who are these niggers making all this money?’ That’s when the trouble started.”

Even as a child, I had heard plenty about that kind of trouble. Stories like that didn’t have happy endings for black people.

My father went on: “Well, sure enough, one night after it was dark, the neighbors of those freed slaves came in a surprise attack. The freed slaves were sleeping in their beds when the shooting started. But they had thought about what to do in the event of something just like this, so they all ran to what’s called a ‘round house.’ That was a big, sturdy building where they stored their farming equipment. They had their rifles in there, too. The men passed out the rifles and shot at their attackers through the narrow windows of the round house, while the women climbed up into the loft and reloaded the guns.

“Suddenly, the door came crashing down. The armed white farmers began swarming inside. But again, the freed slaves were ready for them. They had lined up on either side of the door with battle-axes raised over their heads. When the farmers broke in, they swung those axes down. They won the fight, but it caused a big problem, of course.

“Even the governor had to get involved. He helped them move to a settlement called Lyles Station. Freed slaves from all over came to Lyles Station to settle in a place where their neighbors wouldn’t bother them. They built a thriving community. And my grandmother was born in Princeton, Indiana, which is near Lyles Station. They still have family reunions at Lyles Station.”

When my mother and I were researching Freedom in the Family, I was unable to verify my great-grandmother’s story of the Battle of the Round House, although I contacted the Lyles Station Historic Preservation Society. (There is a children’s book about Lyles Station by Scott Russell Sanders, A Place Called Freedom, which does not include the Round House Battle either.)

But my Great-Grandmother Lydia always stood by her story.

MY FATHER—INTERNET DETECTIVE

My father, John Due, is now a retired civil rights attorney with his own grandchildren, but he has never forgotten that story he heard at his grandmother’s knee. He also has great curiosity, a fondness for the internet and a skeptical mind.

This year, he and his cousin Glenn in Indiana began researching to try to verify the story of the Round House Battle—and their digging mined gold. The most definitive account my father found was an article by university social sciences professor Randy K. Mills that ran in “Black History News and Notes,” a quarterly publication of the Indiana Historical Society Library, in August of 2005. The article is entitled “’They Defended Themselves Nobly’”: A Story of African American Empowerment in Evansville, Indiana, 1857.”

The article details how a family named Lyles journeyed from Tennessee to Indiana after being freed by their slave-master, quoting a direct descendant named Carl Lyles who said they were told to only travel at night and follow the North Star, and that “records show that by the mid-1850s Lyles men had purchased substantial holdings” in Vanderbergh and Gibson counties. [My father believes that our family journeyed some time later, from North Carolina.]

As in my great-grandmother’s story, the article says that the freed black thrived, and a community of about 200 freed blacks and escaped slaves lived in a remote community called The Bayou. “In truth,” Mills writes, “the Lyles probably could not have found a more anti-black region of the state in which to live.”

At a time when kidnapping a freed black was a lesser offense than stealing a horse, as Mills notes—and when lynchings and fears of slave uprisings abounded—an altercation arose between the Lyles family and white neighbors over a hog. According to newspaper accounts, the Lyles’ hog escaped into the field of a white neighbor named Thomas Edmonds. Twenty-four-year-old John Lyles was outraged, although the whites claimed they were merely trying to trap the hog to return it to its owners. The Lyles men were reportedly armed with “clubs and guns,” according to the newspaper The Daily Enquirer.

John Lyles allegedly struck one of Edmonds’ sons with a gun muzzle, causing a serious injury that appeared life-threatening, and the elder Edmonds was also injured. The Lyles men were charged with “assault and battery, with an attempt to commit murder,” according to Mills.

Five Lyles brothers were arrested and freed after posting $1,000 bail—itself almost unheard of at that time. As local newspapers reported these events, the public grew inflamed. The Enquirer urged whites in Union Townships to “[rid] herself of the large numbers of free blacks who now infest it,” according to Mills’ article.

Then, on July 25, 1857, a group of up to 100 heavily armed white men converged on the Lyles family cabin. As Mills writes, they would have brought a cannon if they had not been thwarted while trying to steal it from the courthouse. Instead, they began their attack armed with guns. Before it was over, at least one white man was dead and there were scores of injuries.
The sheriff convinced the Lyles brothers to go into protective custody in Evansville to await trial, and they eventually resettled in what became known as Lyles Station.

MY FATHER’S QUESTIONS

Despite a few discrepancies, the article seems to corroborate some key elements of the story my great-grandmother told my father—but it still left gaping questions in his mind. First, how were so few whites killed? And how did the Lyles family avoid extermination? During the 1960s civil rights struggle more than a hundred years later, Southern blacks lived in terror of being killed for far milder offenses than the Round House Battle.

In Tulsa in 1921, between 25 and 300 blacks were killed in riots that erupted after reports that a black youth had tried to rape or assault a white woman; 35 blocks in the black community of Greenwood were torched. John Singleton’s movie Rosewood recounts the tragic destruction of an entire black town after a black drifter supposedly raped a white woman in 1923. And Emmett Till, only 14, was beaten to death in Mississippi in 1955 for allegedly flirting with a white woman.

During the civil rights movement of the 1960s, my mother and other civil rights workers were shot at in Quincy, Florida, at for trying to register blacks to vote while she was a field secretary for the Congress on Racial Equality (CORE). Southern blacks lived in terror of reprisals for civil rights activism.

The more my father researched the Battle of the Round House, the more questions he had, especially when the characters and personalities came to life: He learned that a man who was killed (or severely injured) in the attack was a county commissioner, Alexander Maddox. And the sheriff who supposedly intervened to help ferry the blacks to safety, John S. Gavitt, would seem to have been the last person to take on that role.

“He was a federal marshal before he was sheriff. As a federal marshal…he had a reputation for arresting famous abolitionists. One of them was from Philadelphia who helped blacks escape from Alabama. He caught up with him in Indiana, arrested everybody, got a judge to find them guilty, and while he was transporting them to abolitionist allegedly tried to escape and got killed. This guy was a character, just like Wyatt Earp in the west. It seems very odd.”

But then again, maybe not.

"Let’s look at the choices he has: They had telegraphs in those days. They could have telegraphed the governor’s office and gotten permission to bring over the Indiana militia, and they could have gone down and protected the blacks from that attack. They could have used the same relationship to arrest white attackers. The newspapers would have a field day about not providing law and justice for white people.”

Mills’ article does not mention an intervention by the governor, but my father believes it was inevitable.

"The paper said the sheriff moved the Lyles group back to Gibson County,” Dad says. “The sheriff had no authority to do that in another county. He had to have authorization from the governor.”

Dad goes on: “The story from my grandmother makes more sense, that it was the governor—who controlled the Land Office—who provided new lands for the brothers and our foreparents back in Gibson County, which was only about 15 to 20 miles away from Union Township. But this was an otherwise secret arrangement, because the anti-black politics were very hostile, and the governor could not politically show his hand. The sheriff took the responsibility because he was a lame duck anyway.”

The intervention of Indiana’s governor could explain the sheriff’s stance—but why did the governor make his choices? Why relocate the blacks to new land?

Dad goes on: “All these years, I assumed the governor was some liberal—but this was a Democrat. [In 1857, Democrats were the pro-slavery party.] So what was the motivation for the sheriff and the governor to save our foreparents’ lives so that you and I could exist today?”

For the answer, my father studied the political landscape of the time, when slavery had divided a nation at the eve of the Civil War and immigrants were pouring into Indiana from Germany and Ireland. And, as noted by Mills in his article, a local newspaper lamented that some locals preferred to live near the freed blacks—who were successful farmers contributing to the community—than the immigrants.

“It was good business for the political parties to have these Europeans active in politics,” Dad says. “They became the backbone of a new Republican party that was developed in Indiana. Abraham Lincoln was reaching out to them in order to develop the new Republican party.

“President Buchanan and the Indiana governor and sheriff were allied with the Southern Democrats. The Germans and the Irish immigrants voted the sheriff out of office, so he was pissed off anyway. There was a class prejudice against the Germans and the Irish.”

Did politics and ethnicity trump race in the aftermath of the Battle of the Round House? And even if that was the case, why would Indiana’s governor go to the trouble of relocating the freed slaves and providing them with new land?

The answer, my father believes, lies with my ancestors' roots in North Carolina. The blacks were farming the land, but it had been purchased for them by a white slave-owner.

“It wasn’t for their rights—it was for the right of the former slave-owner,” my father theorizes. “The governor of Indiana, the sheriff in Evansville, had common understanding as Southerners. Evansville, although it is in the free state of Indiana, had a Southern culture. They were just interested in the slave-owners.”

Furthermore, Dad says, it was smart business to keep a profitable black community.

“Indiana was in a serious depression, basically the way we are today,” Dad says. “They went into serious debt using public funds to build the Wabash Canal and the railroad. The value of these farmers is that they were able to go into the market and help pay off the debt. Their produce helped supply profit for the buyers and the suppliers and traders using that railroad. It was about business.”

THE PECULIAR INSTITUTION

This was the same year as the infamous Dred Scott decision of 1857, where the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that slaves and their descendants—even if they were freed or born free—could never be U.S. citizens and were not protected by the Constitution. Since blacks were not deemed citizens, they also could not sue in court. Legally, blacks were at the mercy of their communities’ whims, as many blacks would be for generations to come.

My father’s theory is that the slave-owner made the original journey with the freed blacks on the wagon train to ensure their safety, and so that he could purchase the land for them. So not only did this North Carolina slave-owner decide to grant freedom to persons whom the law considered only property, but he shepherded their safe passage.

Why?

“We have been brought up on how slavery was one thing—horrible,” Dad says. “Atrocious. Mean-spirited. Treating people like they’re animals. It doesn’t have to be that way. In the western part of North Carolina, western Tennessee and western Kentucky, relationships between slaves and slave masters were much different than relationships between slaves and slave masters in Mississippi or Georgia or Alabama.

“One reason is, in the Deep South there were big plantations and the slave-owner practically didn’t know who the slaves were. But in Roots, remember the slave-owner and Chicken George working together? That was common in North Carolina. Slave owners and slaves worked together. It was more of a relationship. He knew that if he did not take care of them as freepersons, they would be taken in North Carolina to be sold to slavery to somebody else.”

And my father believes the roots of go deeper than a slave-owner who recognized his slaves’ humanity because they worked side-by-side.

After months of research and pondering, my father believes he found the core answer by looking at old family photographs. My great-grandmother and grandmother were both fair-skinned. In the historical photograph he found from a school at Lyles Station in the late-1800s, he notes that most of the black children pictured are also very fair.

What if the freedmen weren’t just slaves—what if they were the slave-owner’s children?

“He had no duty to free his slaves, no duty after freeing them to buy this land to settle. You can talk about laws or the Constitution, but human beings are social animals. And all social animals care for their children,” Dad says.

Most of us do, anyway.

Perhaps my father will never know if he’s right about his theories about the “Battle of the Round House” and the founding of Lyles Station, and his curiosity is not yet satisfied.

Who knows? Perhaps my forebears only survived because of a long-ago gift from a father who had a change of heart.

Whatever the answers to the mystery from history, my great-grandmother’s story has never died.

*******

John Due can be contacted at DueLaw@aol.com

MAY APPEARANCES IN L.A. & MIAMI—YES, MIAMI! (with Edwidge Danticat)

In May, I have three appearances in Southern California—and I’ll be appearing with Edwidge Danticat in Miami May 21!!! I am not officially on book tour, but it feels that way!

LOS ANGELES—MAY 9 (Saturday) and MAY 17 (Sunday):

I’m honored to be a part of a group show at the Pounder-Koné Art Space, where my novel Blood Colony will be featured in “Cooperative.” The show runs May 7-31. I will attend the opening reception from 6 to 9 p.m. May 9 (Saturday), and I will return to read from Blood Colony at 3 p.m. --CORRECTED TIME--Sunday, May 17. The gallery’s address is 3407 Glendale Boulevard in Atwater Village (Los Angeles).

"Cooperative” features women painters, filmmakers and writers, also including Elizabeth Colomba, Julie Dash (Daughters of the Dust), Meri Nana-Ama Danquah, Tonya Engel, Loren Holland, Tamara Madden, Akosua Adoma Owusu, S. Pearl Sharp and Lisa Teasley. My book reading is at 7 p.m. Sunday, May 17.

If you’ve never been to the Pounder-Koné gallery, please come get an introduction. Like so many people, I have a lot to learn about art…and the shows here are terrific. The gallery is co-owned by marvelous actress CCH Pounder (“The Shield”), who is a gracious hostess. I’ve seen her personal art collection, and her taste is really special to behold. As a novelist, I’m just happy to be invited to share a night with fellow artists in a beautiful place.

******

LOS ANGELES—MAY 16 (Saturday)

I’m an alum of Northwestern University, and I’m attending my first NU Club of Los Angeles event: The “Author, Author! NU Authors Bookreading” scheduled from 3 to 5:30 p.m. Saturday, May 16. The event is at the Studio City branch of the Los Angeles Public Library, 12511 Moorpark Street in Studio City.

Also appearing: screenwriter and novelist Allison Burnett (Fame and Feast of Love); playwright, screenwriter and novelist Sally Nemeth; Richard Bangs and Douglas W. Kmiec, a Catholic law professor who was denied communion in Los Angeles for supporting Barack Obama.

Admission is free and open to the public. Books will be on sale for signing.

*****

MIAMI—MAY 21 (Thursday)

I am appearing with Edwidge Danticat in Miami, and I couldn’t be more excited! We’re taking part in a program entitled “Black Diaspora Authors: Edwidge Danticat & Tananarive Due” at the Historical Museum of Southern Florida in Miami.

First, I don’t make it back home to Miami nearly enough, especially since my parents moved to upstate Florida. And secondly, Edwidge Danticat is a treasure in world letters—both in fiction and nonfiction. Her latest book, Brother, I’m Dying, chronicles the painful journey of her Haitian uncle, who died while neglected in custody of U.S. customs; winner of the National Book Critics Circle's Award for autobiography.

Edwidge and I will read from our work and discuss how living in South Florida has influenced our writing. I feel honored to appear with her.

The event is at 6:30 p.m. Thursday, May 21. The Historical Museum of South Florida is at 101 W. Flagler Street in Miami. For information, call 305-375-1492.