Bob Moyer, long a fan of Walter Mosley and his outstanding mystery novels, takes a look at the author’s new book that’s a coming-of-age story rather than anything needing detective skills.
Reviewed by Robert P. Moyer
GHALEN: A Romance in Black.
By Walter Mosley. Amistad. 368 pages. $30.
Walter Mosley writes great mystery novels. That’s because they are more than just mysteries. Mosley places a mystery at the core of the story, then uses its development to illuminate the real subject of his work — the plight of African Americans, particularly African American men, in modern society. As each story plays out, his protagonists, Easy Rawlins, Leonid McGill and others, encounter the racism, indignities, injustices and violence that African Americans face on a regular basis — and they rise above the fray to live and thrive
Add Ghalen Horton to Mosley’s cadre of protagonists. Unlike Easy and Leonid, however, Ghalen is not a detective, his story has no mystery at its core, and he’s not quite 20 by the end of the book.
Ghalen is a coming-of-age story that, without the mystery, rambles a good bit. Ghalen’s tale starts before his birth to a neurodivergent father and a physician mother. The tone of the vicissitudes to come are foreshadowed when his father is manhandled by the police, and his mother is rejected by her mother for marrying a “retard.”
Ghalen, of course, turns out to be a precocious child, who outpaces all his classmates. He is raised and nurtured in an unusual but loving family. At the age of 10, however, he loses his mother and becomes his father’s caretaker, thus effectively ending his childhood.
When he leaves home for college, he is dismayed by the inconsequential behavior of his peers and courses, and drops out. His wandering after that allows Mosley to lead him into interaction with a trafficked girl whom he aids, and a Sudanese refugee, a former child soldier, whom he befriends. These encounters allow Mosley to illuminate other injustices, as Ghalen spirals into his own complications, all the while present to his mother’s absence.
By the time he turns 20, he has been shot, prosecuted wrongly for selling drugs, and improperly sentenced to prison. Each one of these injustices and damages allows Mosley to highlight the disadvantage a Ghalen, even given his intelligence, can endure. His time in prison also gives space and time for Mosley to throw light upon shortcomings of the American penal system, and the dangers therein. As his predecessors have done, Ghalen, drawing upon the love that nurtured him, rises above the fray, to prevail and move forward.
His adventures are engaging, and Mosley’s aptitude for good writing makes this a pleasant read for Mosley fans, but probably a bit meandering for a first-time reader. A newcomer to Mosley should engage with one of his mysteries to determine how much of Mosley’s politics they wish to endure.