Contending ForcesUnion Square & Co., 2023 M10 3 - 464 pages Sappho Clark—beautiful, mysterious, Southern—arrives in Boston to earn her living as a stenographer. She lodges with the Smith family and immediately becomes a source of fascination to the them: Ma Smith is impressed by Sappho’s financial independence; Dora Smith admires Sappho’s quiet self-possession; and Will Smith, Dora’s brother, falls madly in love with Sappho. But as Sappho enters the Smiths’ community, it becomes clear that her beauty is a lure to bad actors, including someone who entertains dark suspicions about her past. . . A murder mystery, the story of a friendship, and a romance set in Boston’s thriving, politically active middle-class Black community, Contending Forces is an unjustly forgotten American classic. |
Contents
The Tragedy | |
Ma Smiths Lodging house | |
Ma Smiths Lodging house Concluded | |
Friendship | |
The Sewing circle | |
Love Took up the Harp of Life | |
The Fair XI The Fair Concluded | |
A Colored Politician | |
The American Colored League | |
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