Albert Spears by Millen Brand, Simon and Schuster, 1947

 

Another interesting and unusual novel by Millen Brand, written with his customary clarity and empathy.  I discovered Brand's first novel, The Outward Room (1937), in a second-hand bookstore and  convinced New York Review Books to republish it, with an afterword written by me, in 2010.  (I also admire his second novel, The Heroes, published in 1939.)

The  eponymous Albert Spears is 66 in 1915, and lives with his invalid and house-bond wife in Jersey City.  (I wonder why Brand gave his hero the same name as  the Nazi war criminal.)  Albert has a son with his long-time mistress, a younger woman in the neighborhood, who he would like to adopt (the son not the mistress).  He runs a carpentry mill and speculates in residential real estate and becomes involved in a local conflagration when a Black family moves into the all-white neighborhood.  Albert befriends the family and attempts to make them feel welcome and safe, but his neighbors are united in their hateful prejudice and do everything they can to force the family to leave (break all their windows, sabotage  their heat and water, send the father to jail).  Albert's son also befriends the family, and fights along with the other Black boys when their gangs clash.

Brand writes from the point of view of both families, from the perspective of the young and elderly of both races, and his creation of many complex and very different characters is admirable.  An interesting and engaging look at race relations, and the power of individuals, in early 20th-century America.

 

 

Alice Neel and Millen Brand (foreground), 1966.

(Photograph by Jonathan Brand)