It's Summer, 1952. Twenty powerful men gather in secret and devise a plot to manipulate the President of the United States. Soon after, writer Eddie Wesley leaves a party hosted by affluent and influential members of black society, and discovers a body. The murdered man had an unusual gold cross gripped between his hands.

A large, suspense-laden thriller that is also a novel of brilliantly astute social observation focusing on two fascinating worlds: that of the New York-Washington black upper middle class, and the complex world of an Ivy League law school. Intricate, superbly written, often funny, this is a triumph of fiction, a brilliantly crafted tapestry of ambition, family secrets, murder, and justice gone ...

Takes us to the New England university town of Elm Harbor, where the murder of a renowned African-American economist opens a door on the racial complications of the town's past, on one family's secrets, and on the hidden and powerful bastions of African-American political influence.

The murder of a renowned African-American economist opens a door on the racial complications of this town's past, on one family's secrets, and on the most hidden and powerful bastions of African-American political influence. This book presents a story that explores the profound difference between allegiance to ideas and to people.

A self-described beneficiary (and, at times, victim) of affirmative action confronts the problems spawned by our national obsession with racial measurement. Carter provides a thoughtful analysis of this controversial issue, arguing that affirmative action often allows the nation to escape inexpensively from its moral obligation to undo the legacy of slavery.

In 1952 twenty men gather at a secret meeting in Martha's Vineyard, and devise a plot to manipulate the President of the United States. Soon after, the body of one of these men is found by Eddie Wesley. When Eddie's sister mysteriously disappears, Eddie and the woman he loves, Aurelia Treene, are pulled into a twenty-year search for the truth.