Runner
Unwitting half-sisters Dee and Lena both find their world and plans overturned by the death of their father, bootlegger Earl Jameson. The temptation to solve their problems by taking up his business is too tempting to resist.
Set amid the Black community of the 1920s on Martha’s Vineyard, Runner is as much a portrait of that world as it is of the sisters. The Negro community, the polite term in 1923, is as established as the white one, a mutual occupation with rules that cannot be broken, and the book is a fascinating look at that world as well as the world of rum-running and its dangerous clientele of speakeasy owners who tolerate no mistakes.
Secondary characters include Lena’s feckless brother, her steady boyfriend, a charming and possibly dangerous customer, and Dee’s girlfriend, a source of constant friction with her mother. They are well drawn, but a sudden metamorphosis as the novel ends seems forced.
Lattimore has clearly done extensive research on the Martha’s Vineyard Black community and on bootlegging, subjects about which most people know little. But the author also falls into the historical novelist’s trap of what “everybody knows.” Contrary to the ubiquitous flapper costume, a “fringe dress” was not a common design and certainly not worn as daytime attire. “Ankle pants” were not an item of women’s clothing in 1923. The little things trip us up. “A bridge too far” originated during World War II.
Other than these small anachronisms, which may bother only the obsessive, this is a rollicking ride, full of adventure, with two heroines we can root for.
