Walter Mosley, Fortunate Son

Fortunate Son

Walter Mosley

In a West Los Angeles hospital, the wife of white heart surgeon Minas Nolan dies while giving birth to their son Eric. Also in the hospital at that time is one week old African-American Thomas Beerman, who has been born prematurely with a hole in his lung and not expected to live long especially outside a bubble. His single mother flower-shop worker Branwyn meets Minas in the hospital; the cardiologist persuades her to come with her son to live in his home with his baby along with their Vietnamese nanny Ahn.

Six years later, Branwyn suddenly dies. Instead of Tommy staying with the man who raised him with love and nurturing, his biological father Elton Trueblood abruptly claims him as his. Tommy grows up on the streets under the violent tutelage of his abusive father though he "talks" to his late mother when he needs solace; Eric enjoys an upper middle class childhood though he is only sixteen when he sires a child. Eric and Tommy miss one another as they were siblings from birth until Elton entered the scene, but each has traveled a different path towards adulthood.

This is Mosley at his best, telling an easy tale that seems so simple yet somehow is extremely deep as he makes the case that nurturing is more critical to making the adult than naturing. The "siblings" make the tale as they grow up in their early years as brothers regardless of the colors of their skins until they are suddenly separated and travel differing paths. Stereotyped as the golden boy and the ghetto boy, only adds to the allegorical depth of a great insightful character study of what makes the man

Little, Brown, Apr 2006, $23.95

ISBN 0316114715

Harriet Klausner