num_pages: 276
description: Kiese Laymons debut novel is a Twain-esque exploration of celebrity authorship violence religion and coming of age in Post-Katrina Mississippi written in a voice thats alternately funny lacerating and wise. The book contains two interwoven stories. In the first its 2013: after an on-stage meltdown during a nationally televised quiz contest 14-year-old Citoyen City Coldson becomes an overnight YouTube celebrity. The next day hes sent to stay with his grandmother in the small coastal community of Melahatchie where a young girl named Baize Shephard has recently disappeared.Before leaving City is given a strange book without an author called Long Division. He learns that one of the books main characters is also named City Coldson--but Long Division is set in 1985. This 1985 City along with his friend and love-object Shalaya Crump discovers a way to travel into the future and steals a laptop and cellphone from an orphaned teenage rapper called...Baize Shephard. They ultimately take these with them all the way back to 1964 to help another time-traveler they meet protect his family from the Klan.Citys two stories ultimately converge in the mysterious work shed behind his grandmothers where he discovers the key to Baizes disappearance.
language: English
title: Long Division
publisher: Agate Bolden