Mayfield, Julian

New York. 1957. Vanguard Press. 1st American Edition. Bookstore Tag in Front & Spine Slightly Cocked, Otherwise Very Good in Dustjacket. 212 pages. hardcover. keywords: Literature Black America. FROM THE PUBLISHER - THE HIT is a magnificently dramatic novel of a universal dream - the dream of sudden riches. In Harlem, that dream centers about the numbers game. Harlem! A world within a world. Never has its hot temper and furious passion, its color, excitement, pathos, sounds, smells, been so captured as in Julian Mayfield's spell-binding story. Harlem was Hubert Cooley's world - and the numbers game was his obsession. This is the story of one day in the life of Hubert and his family - a day that started quietly enough but ended in a crescendo of conflict, violence, disillusion, and - for Hubert's son - the understanding that comes from maturity. Hubert would beg, borrow, even steal for the money to play the numbers. To him a ‘hit' would mean escape - escape forever from the confines of Harlem, from the confines of family, from the confines of reality. Gertrude, his wife; James, his son; all the friends, neighbors, people of Harlem are so sharply drawn by Mr. Mayfield, so compassionately yet so honestly presented that the reader is inextricably involved in their lives and in the passions of this single day. The taut suspense, the compelling story, and Mr. Mayfield's virile style combine to give THE HIT a driving force and a strength rare in today's fiction. And yet this is not a sordid story nor a bitter one - it is a story for everyone who loves the drama of people, the surge of life. inventory #18176