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Vendor
Liepman Literary Agency
Marc Koralnik
Original language
English
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THE BOOK OF COLORS

Raymond Barfield

THE BOOK OF COLORS is the powerful story of an abandoned young woman named Yslea, who grows quickly from wishing she were dead to being a young matriarch—“the only grown-up left” within the strange little family she creates in three bare shacks by the railroad spine leading out of Memphis, Tennessee.

A pediatric oncologist, novelist/poet Raymond Barfield's work with lowincome children at Duke University Hospital and his previous experience in the Emergency Rooms of inner-city hospitals gave birth to the voice of the protagonist in The Book of Colors. He is the author most recently of a book of poems titled Life in the Blind Spot.
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Published by Unbridled Books

Comments

"Yslea's world is small, but it embraces an immense universe of wonderments, bright emotions, slant thoughts and patterns that only she can discover. In The Book of Colors Raymond Barfield reveals a story like no other I have experienced, inexorably dark in circumstance but triumphantly luminous in spirit. ‘We are made up of pieces but somehow we feel whole.' That wholeness is celebrated in these brave pages. They seized upon me like an angelic visitation. What a wonderful novel!"

"In the traditions of Toni Morrison and Flannery O'Connor, Raymond Barfield presents a gorgeous and dismaying human tapestry from the edges of Southern society. An ethereal story of poverty and redemption that ends with a phoenix-like flourish and abounds with grace.”"

"Yslea is a keen-eyed young woman with a wandering mind who picks up on fine details of the little things of life . A beautifully written debut."