The Heart of Whiteness

Not a bad read, but definitely not worth the time it took to finish. It either needed to be more interesting, or quite a bit shorter…

Okay, so to be totally honest, I read this book like two weeks ago and forgot about it and just now realized I never reviewed it. So…there’s your recommendation, basically. But here’s a bit more detail.

Goodreads summary: Lemaster Carlyle, the president of the country’s most prestigious university, and his wife, Julie, the divinity school’s deputy dean, are America’s most prominent and powerful African American couple. Driving home through a swirling blizzard late one night, the couple skids off the road. Near the sight of their accident they discover a dead body. To her horror, Julia recognizes the body as a prominent academic and one of her former lovers. In the wake of the death, the icy veneer of their town Elm Harbor, a place Julie calls “the heart of whiteness,” begins to crack, having devastating consequences for a prominent local family and sending shock waves all the way to the White House.

It’s mostly conspiracy theory and political not-so-thriller, focusing on “the darker nation” vs the “paler nation”, a couple of terms that get thrown around a lot. Julie does not make a good main character — she’s a bit useless for someone who’s supposed to be solving a vast conspiracy. I did like the ex-cop turned campus security guard who ends up helping her out — he was pretty cool. There’s a whole other subplot involving Julie’s screwed up teenage daughter that never really quite gelled with the rest of the story. Overall, not a winner.