The Last Thing You Surrender: A Novel

Three Americans in the Jim Crow South experience profound changes triggered by World War II. An affluent white marine survives Pearl Harbor but at the cost of a black messman's life. Wracked with guilt, he is sent to the Pacific and taken prisoner by the Japanese. A young black woman, widowed by the same Pearl Harbor attack, finds unexpected opportunity and a dangerous friendship working in a segregated Alabama shipyard. A black man who witnessed his parents' lynching as a child is conscripted to fight Nazis for a country he despises, but discovers a new kind of patriotism serving in the all-black 761st Tank Battalion. Set against violent racial conflict on both the front lines and home front, the novel explores the moral struggles of individuals from a divided nation. It examines what it takes to change someone's mind about race and what is required for a country and people to move forward, transformed.