Coming into town from the south on Highway 12, youll pass a monument of Christ with His arms outstretched to bless the travelers, a statue the locals call the Flying Jesus. Back in the forties, a bunch of the city council members decided it might act as a reminder to slow folks down a little, since they didnt pay much attention to the speed limit signs. Nothing much has changed in Linden in the past twenty-five years. The hooligans who terrorize senior citizens on Main Street have graduated from roller skates to roller blades, but Paulies Theatre still changes features once every three weeks on Thursday, and most afternoons, if business is slow, you can catch Bud Newton behind the shop at work on his latest masterpiece: an eight-foot replica of Elvis made of used mufflers welded together. Hell be glad to show you some of his other creationsthe Christmas tableau is particularly touching.

Neil Kingsblood is a white middle-class man who discovers, while researching his family background, that he is directly descended from an African adventurer on the American frontier. Through various machinations, Kingsblood loses his banking job and takes a lesser one. He begins to be treated differently by former acquaintances, despite the lack of visible black African ancestry. He is forced to choose between continuing what he has come to see as a hollow existence in the white community and taking on the oppressed minority status of the black community. After Kingsblood tells several white friends about his newfound ancestry, the news quickly spreads, and he finds that acquaintances change their behavior toward him. He engages in a quixotic struggle against the racism newly apparent but widespread in his community.