We Hope for Better Things Read online

  Table of Contents

  Cover

  Endorsements

  Title Page

  Copyright Page

  Dedication

  Epigraph

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  Epilogue

  Author’s Note and Acknowledgments

  Excerpt of New Novel

  1.

  About the Author

  Back Ads

  Back Cover

  List of Pages

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  “We Hope for Better Things has it all: fabulous storytelling, an emotional impact that lingers long after you turn the last page, and a setting that immerses you. I haven’t read such a powerful, moving story since I read To Kill a Mockingbird in high school. This book will change how you look at the world we live in. Highly recommended!”

  Colleen Coble, USA Today bestselling author of the Rock Harbor series and The View from Rainshadow Bay

  “A timely exploration of race in America, We Hope for Better Things is an exercise of empathy that will shape many a soul. Erin Bartels navigates this sensitive topic with compassion as she shifts her readers back and forth between past and present, nudging us to examine the secrets we keep, the grudges we hold, and the prejudices we may help create even without intention.”

  Julie Cantrell, New York Times and USA Today bestselling author of Perennials

  “It’s not easy to weave three time periods into a cohesive narrative, each with its own story and intriguing characters. Erin Bartels has accomplished the difficult. She’s woven together black and white silk threads into a braid so well crafted that a reader will carry forward the braid of love and separation, race and reconciliation, long after the last page is read. I applaud her courage, her authenticity, her beautiful turn of phrase, the freshness of her imagery, and the depth of her story that speaks to a contemporary world where understanding is often absent. We Hope for Better Things is a remarkable debut novel that every reader will see was written by a skilled writer telling a story of her heart.”

  Jane Kirkpatrick, award-winning author of Everything She Didn’t Say

  “Erin Bartels’s We Hope for Better Things shares the joys and sorrows of three women from different generations. Beginning with the turmoil of the Civil War through the race riots of the sixties to modern day, the story peels away excuses and pretensions to reveal the personal tragedies of prejudice. A roller coaster of emotions awaits as you share the lives of these women and hope along with them for better things.”

  Ann H. Gabhart, bestselling author of River to Redemption

  “Storytelling at its finest. Erin Bartels delivers a riveting story of forbidden love, family bonds, racial injustice, and the power of forgiveness. Spanning multiple generations, We Hope for Better Things is a timely, sobering, moving account of how far we’ve come . . . and how much distance remains to be covered. A compulsively readable, incredibly powerful novel.”

  Lori Nelson Spielman, New York Times bestselling author of The Life List

  “There is the Detroit we think we know, and there is the Detroit full of stories that are never brought to the forefront. With We Hope for Better Things, Erin Bartels brings full circle an understanding of contemporary Detroit firmly rooted in the past, with enthralling characters and acute attention to detail. It’s a must not just for Detroit lovers but also for those who need to understand that Detroit history is also American history.”

  Aaron Foley, city of Detroit’s chief storyteller and editor of The Detroit Neighborhood Guidebook

  © 2019 by Erin Bartels

  Published by Revell

  a division of Baker Publishing Group

  PO Box 6287, Grand Rapids, MI 49516-6287

  www.revellbooks.com

  Ebook edition created 2019

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means—for example, electronic, photocopy, recording—without the prior written permission of the publisher. The only exception is brief quotations in printed reviews.

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is on file at the Library of Congress, Washington, DC.

  ISBN 978-1-4934-1643-1

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is coincidental.

  Martin Luther King Jr.’s speech in chapter 20 is taken from The Martin Luther King Jr. Research and Education Institute, https://kinginstitute.stanford.edu/king-papers/documents/address-freedom-rally-cobo-hall.

  Contents

  Cover

  Endorsements

  Title Page

  Copyright Page

  Dedication

  Epigraph

  1

  2

  3

  4

  5

  6

  7

  8

  9

  10

  11

  12

  13

  14

  15

  16

  17

  18

  19

  20

  21

  22

  23

  24

  25

  26

  27

  28

  29

  30

  31

  32

  33

  34

  35

  36

  37

  38

  39

  40

  41

  42

  43

  44

  45

  46

  47

  48

  49

  50

  51

  52

  53

  54

  55

  Epilogue

  Author’s Note and Acknowledgments

  Excerpt of New Novel

  1

  About the Author

  Back Ads

  Back Cover

  For Calvin,

  whose compassion gives me hope for the future

  Speramus meliora; resurget cineribus.

  We hope for better things; it will rise from the ashes.

  Detroit city motto

  one

  Detroit, July

  The Lafayette Coney Island was not a comfortable place to be early. It wasn’t a comfortable place, period. It was cramped and dingy and packed, and seat saving, such as I was attempting at the lunch rush, was not appreciated.

  Thankfully, at precisely noon as promised, an older black gentleman in a baggy Detroit Lions jersey shuffled through the door, ratty leath
er bag slung over one drooped shoulder.

  “Mr. Rich?” I called over the din.

  He slid into the chair across from me. I’d fought hard for that chair. Hopefully this meeting would be worth the effort.

  “How’d you know it was me?” he said.

  “You said you’d be wearing a Lions jersey.”

  “Oh yes. I did, didn’t I? My son gave me this.”

  “You ready to order? I only have twenty minutes.”

  Mr. Rich was looking back toward the door. “Well, I was hoping that . . . Oh! Here we go.”

  The door swung open and a tall, well-built man sporting a slick suit and a head of short black dreads walked in. He looked vaguely familiar.

  “Denny! We’re just about to order.” Mr. Rich set the leather bag on his lap and slid over in his seat to accommodate the newcomer.

  The man sat on the eight inches of chair Mr. Rich had managed to unearth from his own backside, but most of him spilled out into the already narrow aisle.

  “This is my son, Linden.”

  Something clicked and my eyes flew to one of the many photos on the wall of famous people who’d eaten here over the years. There he was, between Eminem and Drew Barrymore, towering over the smiling staff.

  I sat a little straighter. “The Linden Rich who kicks for the Lions?”

  “Yeah,” he said. “And you are . . . ?”

  “This is Elizabeth Balsam,” Mr. Rich supplied, “the lady who writes all those scandal stories in the Free Press about corruption and land grabbing and those ten thousand—eleven thousand?—untested rape kits they found awhile back and such. She covered the Kilpatrick trial.”

  I offered up a little smile, one I’d practiced in the mirror every morning since college, one I hoped made me look equal parts approachable and intelligent.

  “Oh, yeah, okay,” Linden said. “I see the resemblance. In the eyes.”

  “I told you,” Mr. Rich said.

  “You did.”

  “I’m sorry,” I broke in, “what resemblance?”

  A waiter in a filthy white T-shirt balancing ten plates on one arm came up to the table just then and said, “Denny! Whaddayawant?”

  We ordered our coney dogs—coney sauce and onions for me, everything they had in the kitchen for Linden, and just coney sauce for Mr. Rich, who explained, “I can’t eat onions no more.”

  “And I need silverware,” I added in an undertone.

  When the waiter shouted the order to the old man at the grill, Linden was already talking. “You are not giving her that camera.”

  “You said the photos—the photos should stay for now,” Mr. Rich said. “Why shouldn’t I give her the camera? It ain’t yours, Denny.”

  “It ain’t hers either.”

  “No, she’s going to give it to Nora.”

  Linden took a deep breath and looked off to the side. Though probably anyone else would have been embarrassed to be so obviously talked about as if she wasn’t even there, years of cutthroat journalism had largely squelched that entirely natural impulse in my brain.

  I jumped on the dead air to start my own line of questioning. “On the phone you said you’d been given a few things that were found in a police evidence locker—that belonged to a relative of yours?”

  “No, they belong to a relative of yours. Maybe I should just start from the beginning.”

  I resisted the urge to pull out my phone and start recording the conversation.

  But before Mr. Rich could begin, our coney dogs were plunked down on the table in no particular order. We slid the plates around to their proper owners. The men across from me bit into their dogs. I began to cut mine with a knife and fork, eliciting a you-gotta-be-kidding-me look from Linden.