The Legend of Buddy Bush

Book excerpt: Celebrate the fifteenth anniversary of Shelia P. Moses’s National Book Award finalist and Coretta Scott King Honoree, The Legend of Buddy Bush, with this new edition of a classic novel that’s more relevant than ever. The day Uncle Goodwin “Buddy” Bush came from Harlem all the way back home to Rehobeth Road in Rich Square, North Carolina, is the day Pattie Mae Sheals’s life changes forever. Pattie Mae adores and admires Uncle Buddy—he’s tall and handsome and he doesn’t believe in the country stuff most people believe in, like ghosts and stepping off the sidewalk to let white folks pass. But when Buddy is arrested for a crime against a white woman that he didn’t commit, Pattie Mae and her family are suddenly set to journeying on the long, hard road that leads from loss and rage to forgiveness and pride.