Rescuing Little Roundhead

As adults, we all search our memories of childhood for clues about who we are today. Syl Jones's Rescuing Little Roundhead is a powerful reflection on a childhood of hardship, humor, family, and adventure cut short by a series of tragic events that robbed the author of his innocence. Written as a set of stories linked by common characters and settings, the book portrays the richly nuanced lives of Little Roundhead - Jones as a child - and his family as they struggle for individual expression and civil rights. The potentially explosive network of personal, racial, and class pressures with which the family contends are still with us today. In struggling to overcome this increasingly difficult and dangerous reality, Little Roundhead manages to find within himself the strength and will to survive his experiences in the urban landscape that is, like both the characters and the story, portrayed by Jones in striking and absorbing detail.