Book Review: Clarence Olgibee

Clarence Olgibee. Alan S. Kessler. Black Rose Writing, (March 10, 2016, Trade Paperback and Kindle, 518 pages.

Reviewed by Paige Doepke.

Clarence Olgibee by Alan S. Kessler explores, in many different ways, the consequences of mistakes; mistakes made by innocent children, mistakes made by men, and mistakes made by society itself. It follows Todd Munson and other characters through various relationships and life events over the span of 30 years, during which huge changes occur.

Beginning in 1974, the novel opens with Jimmy Tate Sullivan, a white 17-year-old boy, paying for his part in a racially charged murder his friends bullied him into committing with them. In prison, he meets Todd Munson, a white man who thirty years earlier was best friends with the title character, African American Clarence Olgibee.

The story then goes back to 1942 when Munson and Olgibee were Sullivan’s age. We see Todd Munson was a soft, accepting boy who lived in a primarily African American Midwestern town. He saw himself as the outcast and wanted to fit in with his classmates who he viewed as his equals. He was the poster child for equality. But White supremacy, the civil rights movement, and a loss of innocence would soon change his views as well as those of his friend Clarence, and cause them to make life-altering choices.

While this story takes place during the civil rights era and explores the issues of living in that time, it is more about the individual lives that were lived parallel to the movement. Life went on underneath this huge part of our country’s history. Todd Munson, Clarence Olgibee, and Jimmy Tate Sullivan’s lives are affected by racial inequality, but they are affected by much more than that at the same time. Kessler brilliantly shows us how dimensional life is.

We all know how much can change in thirty years. Many of us would probably say we are not much like who we were that long ago. My favorite part of this novel is how Kessler paints the gray area of humanity. No one is completely good or completely bad. There’s not a true protagonist in this story, and there aren’t protagonists in life—not really. Each of the characters is human and vulnerable, and the choices they make impact their lives, present and future, fiercely.

I recommend this novel to anyone who wants to read a very different story about race and human development. It is unlike any other novel I’ve read. It challenged me as a reader and left me thinking about its themes long after putting it down.