Daddy Was A Number Runner.

MERIWETHER, Louise; Foreword by James Baldwin.

$175.00

Item Number: 145875

Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall, Inc, 1970.

First edition of this modern classic “a tough, tender, bitter novel of a black girl struggling towards womanhood” in 1930s Harlem” (Publishers Weekly). Octavo, original cloth. Foreword by James Baldwin. Very good in a good dust jacket, name blacked out on the front pastedown and number to the front free endpaper. Jacket design by Bob Cuevas.

Depression-era Harlem is home for twelve-year-old Francie Coffin and her family, and it’s both a place of refuge and the source of untold dangers for her and her poor, working class family. The beloved “daddy” of the title indeed becomes a number runner when he is unable to find legal work, and while one of Francie’s brothers dreams of becoming a chemist, the other is already in a gang. Francie is a dreamer, too, but there are risks in everything from going to the movies to walking down the block, and her pragmatism eventually outweighs her hope; “We was all poor and black and apt to stay that way, and that was that.”