Book Description

"After more than forty years, Lucy Daniels, author of the prize-winning Caleb, My Son, returns with a new novel, The Eyes of the Father, with the same vigor and passion but with a honed wisdom and wealth of insight. Daniels is a remarkably gifted writer who sings a tremblingly beautiful song." -Dannye Romine Powell, author of Parting the Curtains: Interviews with Southern Writers "As a black woman artist who deals with race and identity in my paintings, I resonated with the inner conflicts of Lucy Daniels' beautifully drawn characters in The Eyes of the Father." -Beverly McIver, Artist "Simple clarity lit onto layers of complex emotions are the brushstrokes by which Lucy Daniels paints her tale of a South never rid of its history. The Eyes of the Father sings to a soulful rhythm of sustenance in the battle between tradition and its invisible enemy, indifference." -Martin Tucker, Writer/Editor As a small child in Los Angeles, blue-eyed, red-haired, black-skinned Lily Price, daughter of a flamboyant white musician and a beautiful black singer, glories in the delight her father shows for her and her strikingly "special" appearance. But when tragedy brings Lily and her mother back east to the rigidly conservative home of her fundamentalist minister grandfather in Millboro, North Carolina, "special" is viewed as "freak." Lily's emotional response to this loss is only one of several with which this story demonstrates the power the past wields over the present.