The Return of Buddy Bush (review)

Reader interest in the real story behind The Legend of Buddy Bush (BCCB 4/04)reportedly prompted Moses to pick up where she left off, in 1947, with Patti Mae in the midst of her close-knit North Carolina community's grief over the death of her grandpa Braxton and her uncle Buddy having escaped lynching and headed north. She looks forward to escaping all of the hollering women and crying men by going with her sister to Harlem, where she is sure she will be able to find Buddy and convince him to come home. While her sister is at work, Patti Mae sneaks out to stroll the streets of Harlem, reveling in the sights and sounds of the northern community so different from her own. Her wanderings are successful: Patti Mae finds her uncle and convinces him to return to Rich Square, where both he and his kidnappers are acquitted in a less than fair trial. Patti Mae's smoothly melodious black southern dialect once again provides flavor, but there is far more atmosphere than focus in her storytelling here. After finally accessing the family's collection of obituaries, she uses these as a springboard to a meandering stream-of-consciousness narrative that introduces readers to all of the folks on Rehobeth Road. Though she continually complains that she is excluded from grown folks' business, she is an accomplished eavesdropper who is just beginning to connect the events she hears about and witnesses with the prejudice and discrimination that motivates them. The minimal plotting is undeniably contrived—she happens upon the right shoeshine stand in Harlem to find her uncle and gets a lesson in black history and culture from Richard Wright himself, who just happens to be having his shoes shined at the time—but Patti Mae's compelling storytelling once again provides an engrossing, explanatory context for the events surrounding the case of Goodwin Bush. An author's note, with photos of places, people, and court documents, follows the text.