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A Cry of Angels

Jeff Fields

Start date: October 1, 2025

Finish date: December 31, 2025

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Aug 12, 2020 Candi rated it it was amazing

Shelves: favorites, historical-fiction, book-i-own, american-south

“That was the Ape Yard. Its color the unrelieved red of the sun-baked slopes. Its sound a clatter, the ragged burr of old engines, a fight somewhere in the squat gray houses, a curse, a calling, an unexplained wail in the night. Its mood, eternal despair. Of course, that vision of my world came later. At the time I saw it through the eyes of a boy, in that half-remembered time when we were dreamers.”

This book, my friends, is the reason I log onto this website nearly every day, poring through rev “That was the Ape Yard. Its color the unrelieved red of the sun-baked slopes. Its sound a clatter, the ragged burr of old engines, a fight somewhere in the squat gray houses, a curse, a calling, an unexplained wail in the night. Its mood, eternal despair. Of course, that vision of my world came later. At the time I saw it through the eyes of a boy, in that half-remembered time when we were dreamers.”

This book, my friends, is the reason I log onto this website nearly every day, poring through reviews and adding one book after another to my mammoth to-read list. Because every once in a while, an iridescent pearl rolls across my path. One that I will hoard forever and loan out only to the most trusted of fellow readers. A Cry of Angels has less than one hundred and fifty ratings and even fewer reviews here as of this morning. Why?! Please read this book! You are missing out on one of the most brilliant coming-of-age stories. Jeff Fields’ writing is luminous and soulful. He is a born storyteller, and I can’t imagine why on earth he has no other novels attached to his name.

When we meet Earl Whitaker, he is a young teen standing on the precipice of manhood. Orphaned at a young age, he lives in a boardinghouse with a group of ‘discarded’ elderly men and women who have been displaced by families who no longer want to be responsible for their care. Situated in the poverty-stricken hollow called The Ape Yard, a part of town populated by mostly blacks, poor whites, and a handful of outcasts, this establishment is run by the indomitable Miss Esther, Earl’s great-aunt.

“It was never allowed to become one of those places where old people sit and listen to the ticking away of their lives. At Miss Esther’s there was humor, there was individuality, there was respect, all radiating from her own bullfiddle personality.”

Besides Miss Esther and Earl, we are introduced to a motley assortment of some of the most memorable, richly-drawn characters ever written. Yes, for a short time I believed these people truly breathed, laughed, cried, made love, and fought for their lives and their dreams in Quarrytown, Georgia during the 1950s. I would almost swear they were real persons if this hadn’t been pegged as historical fiction.

Em Jojohn, a fierce giant of a man said to be a descendant of the Lumbee tribe of North Carolina, becomes Earl’s protector and roommate of sorts in the little loft behind the boardinghouse. This formidable force answers to no one! Jayell Crooms, a gifted architect who refuses to sit behind a desk drafting cloned models of houses, is soon to be wed to a social climber from Atlanta. No one can understand why he ran away from the reckless and beautiful Phaedra in pursuit of such a mismatch as Gwen Burns. Tio is a young black teen and Earl’s best friend who helps old man Teague run his grocery store, even as the big store chains begin to threaten its existence. He, much like Jayell, is something of a visionary, coming up with plans and designs to improve Mr. Teague’s business. And then, there is Doc Bobo… I’m sure he must be listed along with the definition of “evil” in your online dictionary. Doc Bobo, owner of Bobo’s Funeral Home and various other properties in The Ape Yard, is the most influential black member of the community. The mayor and other bigwigs of Quarrytown look the other way as long as Doc Bobo manages to keep his own people in line. He does so with threats, force, and when necessary, with the help of a gang of thugs, including the menacing monster of a man named Clyde Fay.

“That was the way. Nothing in the sunlight for Bobo. Give them only screams to take with them as they climbed the hills to do his bidding, to take to their beds that night, to boil in their dreams and allow their imagination to do Bobo’s work. Later they could see the result. He was so careful in his staging, in his use of terror against ignorance. Bobo was a master.”

There’s a lot of depth to this book and I’ll beg you again to read this. Set on the brink of desegregation, A Cry of Angels chronicles race relations with keen insight. Written in 1974, yet highly relevant to our current times, this novel should be on high school required reading lists, right alongside To Kill a Mockingbird and other influential works. It deals with the neglectful and disgraceful housing issues of African-Americans as they are pushed out of white neighborhoods and forced into government sponsored projects, further segregating them from the white population. Anyone that questions today's Black Lives Matter movement should take a look at this book. I don’t see how a human being with a heart and a conscience could walk away from this not having learned something very essential to freedom, equal rights, and accountability. I know I sure did. Humor, heartache, and beautiful prose are all wrapped up with a bow in this unforgettable piece of literature.

“I have this notion that maybe this world is the hell of the angels. That maybe we’re creatures with angels exiled in our souls, banished to this godawful existence, crying in despair… and all those fancy frigging dreams we have are only the cries of those poor old angels, their screams in our animal minds.” ...more

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