Once Two Heroes

by Calvin Baker

A black former Frenchman and an older Mississippi family man serve together in World War II only to confront the painful post-war realities of American racism, which they experience in the wake of a murder, a police chase, and a desperate bid for freedom. By the author of Once Two Heroes. 20,000 first printing.

Genres: Fiction, Historical Fiction

275 pages, Hardcover

First published January 27, 2003

About the author

Calvin Baker is the author of the critically-acclaimed novels Naming the New World, Once Two Heroes and Dominion, which was a finalist for the Hurston-Wright Award, a New York Magazine Critics’ Pick and New York Daily News Best Book of the Year. His long-awaited fourth novel, Grace, will be published in July.

Calvin Baker grew up in Chicago and currently lives in New York.

Reviews

[Heather · Rating 1 out of 5]

The premise was interesting but that's where my engagement with this book stopped. I raced to the end and was just disappointed. I found it difficult to find rhythm with the prose and it seemed to me that the author just got lost in thought a lot, which led to confusion and a lot of rereading sentences. This about the differences of two men. Long story short, character study with not enough lesson.

[Deborah Frazier Gibson]

Calvin Baker is an amazing author who should've been paid attention to long before now. His brutal honesty about how people regarded one another in terms of racism in the 1940's was physically shocking for me. But sadly enough, true. I hope to read more from this young man.

[Megan · Rating 1 out of 5]

This book was really choppy.

[Paul · Rating 3 out of 5]

It's a compelling story, and the ending is fucking horrifying, but the writer keeps getting poetic, maybe to show us all he went to college. It kept taking me out of the story.