The Narrows (1953)

Petry’s 1953 novel has lived in the shadow of The Street, rather than being forgotten by every readership. The Virago edition with Kaitlyn Greenidge’s introduction offers a way to reconsider it. A Black graduate working as a bartender and a wealthy white woman become entangled within a Connecticut town’s racial and class divisions. The surrounding community gives the affair its destructive pressure; this is social observation with real narrative heat.