Book Cover Image of The Time of Our Singing: A Novel by Richard Powers

The Time of Our Singing: A Novel
by Richard Powers

Publication Date: Jan 01, 2004
List Price: $22.00
Format: Paperback, 640 pages
Classification: Fiction
ISBN13: 9780312422189
Imprint: Picador
Publisher: Macmillan Publishers
Parent Company: Holtzbrinck Publishing Group

Paperback Description:

On Easter day, 1939, at Marian Anderson’s epochal concert on the Washington Mall, David Strom, a German Jewish émigré scientist, meets Delia Daley, a young Philadelphia Negro studying to be a singer. Their mutual love of music draws them together, and-against all odds and better judgment-they marry. They vow to raise their children beyond time, beyond identity, steeped only in song. Jonah, Joseph, and Ruth grow up, however, during the Civil Rights era, coming of age in the violent 1960s, and living out adulthood in the racially retrenched late century. Jonah, the eldest, "whose voice could make heads of state repent," follows a life in his parents’ beloved classical music. Ruth, the youngest, devotes herself to community activism and repudiates the white culture her brother represents. Joseph, the middle child and the narrator of this generation-bridging tale, struggles to find himself and remain connected to them both.