'Petry is the writer we have been waiting for, hers are the stories we need to fully illuminate the questions of our moment, while also offering a page-turning good time. Ann Petry, the woman, had it all, and so does her insightful, prescient and unputdownable prose . . . The Narrows is the story of a doomed interracial romance that proves that passion and prejudice are not mutually exclusive' Tayari Jones, New York Times
Link Williams is a handsome and brilliant Dartmouth graduate who tends bar due to the lack of better opportunities for an African American man in a mid-century Connecticut town. The routine of Link's life is interrupted when he intervenes to save a woman from a late-night attack. Due to the thick fog rolling in from the river, they cannot easily discern each other, so it is only when they enter a bar for a drink that Camillo sees her rescuer is black and Link learns that the woman is white. Camilo (Camilla Treadway Sheffield) is beautiful, wealthy and married: she has crossed the town's racial divide to relieve the tedium of her life. Brought together by chance, Link and Camilo draw each other into furtive encounters that violate the rigid and uncompromising social codes of their times.
Industry Reviews
Her work endures not merely because of the strength of its message but its artistry . . . Petry will always feel on time. Her kind of talent will always feel startling and sui generis: The music of her sentences, and their discipline; her unerring sense of psychology; the fullness with which she endows each character, which must be understood as a kind of love; the plots that commandeer whole hours and days . . . Her work endures not only because it illuminates reality, but because it harnesses the power of fiction to supplant it
