Chicago writer Leon Forrest’s big, polyphonic, exuberantly imaginative, rambunctious, philosophical, funny, and righteous fourth novel, Divine Days, was originally published in 1992 by a small local outfit, Another Chicago Press, to avid acclaim, including a starred review in Booklist. The paperback W. W. Norton issued three years later, following the destruction of much of the hardcover run in a warehouse fire, has been out of print for many years. Now Seminary Co-op Offsets, a new imprint at Northwestern University Press, delivers a well-designed definitive edition to twenty-first-century readers.
Forrest’s reverberating tour de force, an impassioned inquiry into faith, longing, identity, community, racism, and survival, takes place over seven days in the life of aspiring playwright Joubert Antoine Jones, a chaotic, heart-wrenching, and mind-blowing week in February 1966 set in motion…
