BLACK CYANIDE / white pill by Greg Hoetker
A hundred years in a hundred pages, exploring race, love, religion, and more. Part historical, part experimental, with spurts of American, African American, and Idahoan history. Story by Greg Hoetker. Foreword by Ken Calvin.
ISBN-13: 978-1-734-1079-4-4
D. Donovan, Senior Reviewer, Midwest Book Review
BLACK CYANIDE / white pill is a novella that moves through the decades from 1920 to 2020, presenting an unusual structure of one-page vignettes for every year to present its story in a succinct, digestible manner. It stands at the crossroads between fiction and memoir, being neither one nor the other but a conglomeration of both as it tells of a narrator whose mother was born a slave, giving birth to a mulatto son at age 60 whose skin was so pale, he could 'pass'. From early spiritual and social inspection to the cementing of values and goals that both refute common sentiment and return to his roots, these vignettes follow the struggles of not just black and white America, but those whose lives lie somewhere within an uncertain ethnicity. BLACK CYANIDE / white pill is narrated in the first person and so excels in following matters of the heart; dreams formulated, interrupted, and revised; and the experiences of contrasting, clashing black and white societies from the perspective of one who lives on both sides. As Amos reaches his nineties and past and present begin to coalesce in his mind, readers remain immersed in a progressive journey that follows his transformations, influences, and the racial and political sentiments that have rocked a nation and sparked ongoing change.
The author is especially adept, at this juncture, at summing up such personal and political transition points, comparing ideals with realities. BLACK CYANIDE / white pill's focus on mercurial racial relationships, social and personal change, political awareness and more, as narrated over the decades by an observer who becomes a participant in America's transformation, creates a thought-provoking and astute examination replete with struggle, insight, revelation, and growth. Readers seeking a literary survey of changing racial relationships will find BLACK CYANIDE / white pill absorbing, thought-provoking, and hard to put down.
Joe Walters, Independent Book Review
Fact, fiction, and myth converge in BLACK CYANIDE / white pill. This book weaves an enjoyable coming-of-age story through a series of short, nuanced chapters connected by powerful themes, characters, and a quest for identity. Both historical events and mythical ones coincide with Sideways’s personal journey, offering readers the opportunity to toe the line of fact and fiction in a special way. Similar to John Irving’s The World According to Garp, we get a complete view of this man’s life, from birth to death, as he encounters snippets of the seemingly impossible. Truth plays a dominant role in a book filled with everyday mythology.