Freedom of Association

by Harvey Havel

To get back into the good graces of his publisher and escape his threadbare existence as an old-school poet living in the ghetto of a New Jersey city, Preston Whitcomb agrees to mentor a young street-wise slam poet, Claude Carolina, who has the potential to rise to the top of the professional poetry world in nearby New York City. Preston then persuades his beautiful and successful ex-wife, Amanda Larson, to tutor Claude in the art of writing traditional poetry at the college where she teaches, but when Claude begins to fall in love with her, Preston has no choice but to walk the fine line between his exploitation of black genius and his conscious struggle for racial harmony and social equality.

325 pages, Paperback

First published October 2, 2006