No crystal stair

the long version

Telling the remarkable story of black Americans in the 20th century through the character of Ann Elizabeth Carter, this historical novel weaves real events throughout the tale of America making slow, steady, and still unfinished progress towards racial equality. Raised in the privileged and comfortable world of Atlanta’s black elite, Ann Elizabeth still endures the dangers and rank discrimination of the deep south. When she marries Tuskegee Airman Robert Metcalf during World War II, their world broadens to include war-torn Germany, postwar Los Angeles, school integration, marches and sit-ins of the civil rights era, Cold War Europe, and the black separatist movement of the 1960s and early 1970s.