Only the Strong

Starred review from April 27, 2015
This thoroughly entertaining and stylish crime novel from Asim (A Taste of Honey) is set in Gateway City, a fictionalized version of Asim's native St. Louis, during the 1970s. Thirty-five-year-old Lorenzo "Guts" Tolliver is the semi-retired "enforcer" for the gangster chieftain Ananias Goode. Guts, who now operates a fleet of taxicabs, has been in a three-year romance with Pearl Jordan, a gorgeous woman with ambitious dreams of owning her own dance studio. Though Pearl wants to get married, Guts is reluctant to tie the knot due to his violent and dangerous lifestyle. As a special favor, Goode assigns Guts to watch over the flashy baseball player Rip Crenshaw since Goode doesn't trust his replacement enforcer, Sharps, to take care of it. The author creates a flawed, complex, and likeable protagonist in Guts. A supernatural element adds another dramatic layer to this fast-paced narrative. As Goode and Guts take their final steps to go straight, the inevitable showdown with their past troubles and enemies plays out. Asim's impressive novel deserves favorable comparison to the works of Chester Himes and Walter Mosley.

Starred review from March 15, 2015
An epic saga of 1970s African-American life in a Midwestern city is neatly, deftly, and evocatively compressed into three tales with overlapping characters-and destinies. In the lingering aftermath of Martin Luther King Jr.'s assassination in 1968, there was among African-Americans a sense of lost promise spiked with rage, anxiety, and drift. Yet by the early '70s, there was also a burgeoning sense of pride, powered by a growing perception of the many possibilities King's movement had helped to bring about. Asim's novel, set in Gateway City, the same reimagined version of St. Louis he depicted in his short story collection, A Taste of Honey (2010), parses these seemingly disparate forces as they act upon characters whose fates overlap in three sections. In the first, Lorenzo "Guts" Tolliver, a reformed professional "leg breaker"-turned-cab-service proprietor, struggles to free himself of his violent past but still finds himself dodging trouble while doing favors for the local crime boss, Ananias Goode. In the second, Goode, who likewise seeks a quieter, gentler life, sees his own potential salvation in his secret, if peripatetic, romance with a socially prominent pediatrician, Artinces Noel. But the competing demands of their very different callings, along with those from within their volatile, at-risk neighborhood, keep getting in the way. The third section focuses on Charlotte Divine, raised a foster child on Gateway's meaner streets, who is now making her way through college-and through a romance as challenging as those faced by the other major characters. This narrative suite covers a lot of psychic, cultural, and historic ground, and its nature can shift from crime and suspense to love and torment in a couple of pages. Yet Asim maintains impressive control of his sinewy style and elegiac tone while also remaining solicitous toward his hard-boiled but tender-souled characters. You will rarely find a historical novel that's as panoramic yet also as lean, mean, and moving as this.

Starred review from April 15, 2015

This debut novel by Emerson College professor Asim (The N Word) vitalizes a fictionalized 1970 St. Louis offering three separate but connected stories filled with fully realized characters and settings. In one, "bone-crusher" Guts Tolliver petitions his boss, gangster-businessman Ananias Goode, for less crushing and comes to run a taxi company; in another, Goode begins a torrid affair with prominent doctor Artinces Noel; and in yet another, Noel's "ward" falls under the spell of college and a charismatic but damaged young man. Characters weave in and out, held together by ongoing sidelights such as slugger Rip Crenshaw's stolen World Series ring, taken by the brother of one of three girls who roll the first baseman, who's convinced that the ring gave him magical powers. The last few pages bring things together nicely, including Crenshaw and his ring. VERDICT Asim's first novel is being compared to work by writers such as Richard Russo and Stuart Dybek because of the strong sense of community. A better comparison would be the successfully rendered Washington of George Pelecanos, except that the characters here are black and most (but not all) of the violence occurs offstage. But, readers drawn to any of these writers will appreciate this excellent piece of urban realism.--Robert E. Brown, Oswego, NY

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