Tell Me How Long the Train's Been Gone: A Novel

Product Description [Read by Kevin Kenerly] At the height of his theatrical career, the actor Leo Proudhammer is nearly felled by a heart attack. As he hovers between life and death, Baldwin shows the choices that have made him enviably famous and terrifyingly vulnerable. For between Leo's childhood on the streets of Harlem and his arrival into the intoxicating world of the theater lies a wilderness of desire and loss, shame and rage. An adored older brother vanishes into prison. There are love affairs with a white woman and a younger black man, each of whom will make irresistible claims on Leo's loyalty. And everywhere there is the anguish of being black in a society that at times seems poised on the brink of total racial war. Overpowering in its vitality, extravagant in the intensity of its feeling, Tell Me How Long the Train's Been Gone is a major work of American literature. Review ''Baldwin is one of the few genuinely indispensable American writers.'' --Saturday Review ''He has not himself lost access to the sources of his being--which is what makes him read and awaited by perhaps a wider range of people than any other major American writer.'' -- The Nation ''James Baldwin's story of the mid-century African American experience is told in the first person by the character Leo Proudhammer, ably voiced here by Kevin Kenerly.'' -- AudioFile About the Author James Baldwin (1924 - 1987) is the author of more than twenty works of fiction and nonfiction, including Go Tell It on the Mountain, Notes of a Native Son, Another Country, and Blues for Mister Charlie. He received many awards and was made a commander of the Legion of Honor in 1986.