The Third Life of Grange Copeland

Despondent over the futility of life in the South, black tenant farmer Grange Copeland leaves his wife and son in Georgia to head North. After meeting an equally humiliating existence there, he returns to Georgia, years later, to find his son, Brownfield, imprisoned for the murder of his wife. As the guardian of the couple's youngest daughter, Grange Copeland is looking at his third -- and final -- chance to free himself from spiritual and social enslavement.

Alice Walker won the Pulitzer Prize and the American Book Award for her novel The Color Purple, which was preceded by The Third Life of Grange Copeland and Meridian. Her other bestselling novels include By the Light of My Father's Smile, Possessing the Secret of Joy and The Temple of My Familiar. She is also the author of two collections of short stories, three collections of essays, five volumes of poetry and several children's books. Her books have been translated into more than two dozen languages. Born in Eatonton, Georgia, Walker now lives in Northern California.

BROWNFIELD STOOD CLOSE to his mother in the yard, not taking his eyes off the back of the receding automobile. His Uncle Silas slowed the car as it got to a place where a pointed rock jutted up out of the road: a week before he had busted an oil pan there. Once past this spot, which he had cursed as he passed to and fro over it during the week, he stuck out his arm and waved jauntily back at them. Brownfield waved sadly, his eyes blurred with tears. His Aunt Marilyn, not visible through the rear window of the car, waved a dainty blue handkerchief from her front window. It fluttered merrily like a pennant. Brownfield's cousins had their faces pressed to the rear window, and their delicate, hard-to-see hands flopped monotonously up and down. They were tired of waving, for they had been waving good-bye since they finished breakfast.The automobile was a new 1920 Buick, long and high and shiny green with great popping headlights like the eyes of a frog. Inside the car it was all blue, with seats that were fuzzy and soft. Slender silver handles opened the doors and rolled the astonishingly clear windows up and down. As it bumped over the road its canvas top was scratched by low elm branches. Brownfield felt embarrassed about the bad road and the damage it did to his uncle's car. Uncle Silas loved his car and had spent all morning washing it, polishing the wheel spokes and dusting off the running board. Now it bounced over gullies and potholes in the road, tossing Uncle Silas and his wife and children up in the air and slamming them down again. Brownfield sighed as the sound of metal against rock reached his ears. The road was for mules, wagons and bare feet only."A wagon'd be easier," said his father."But not nearly 'bout as grand as that." His mother looked after the car without envy, but wistfully.Brownfield watched the automobile as it turned a curve and was finally out of sight. Then he watched the last of the dust settle. Already he missed his cousins, although they made him feel dumb for never having seen a picture show and for never having seen houses stacked one on top of the other until they nearly reached the sky. They had stayed a week and got over being impressed by his small knowledge of farming the first day. He showed them how to milk the cow, how to feed the pigs, how to find chickens' eggs; but the next day they had bombarded him with talk about automobiles and street lights and paved walks and trash collectors and about something they had ridden in once in a department store that went up, up, up from one floor to the next without anybody walking a step. He had been dazzled by this information and at last overwhelmed. They taunted him because he lived in the country and never saw anything or went anywhere. They told him that his father worked for a cracker and that the cracker owned him. They told him that their own daddy, his Uncle Silas, had gone to Philadelphia to be his own boss. They told him that his mother wanted to leav

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Excerpted from The Third Life of Grange Copeland by Alice Walker
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