Isaac's Song

Note: This book will be published on January 14, 2025. Any orders of this book before that date will be considered preorders and shipped upon its release.

By Daniel Black

Tags: Literary Fiction, Black and Queer, Gay, Preorder

*From the Viral Clark Atlanta University Commencement Speaker*
*From the Georgia Author of the Year Award Winner*

The beloved author of Don’t Cry for Me and Perfect Peace returns with a poignant, emotionally exuberant novel about a young queer Black man finding his voice in 1980s Chicago—a novel of family, forgiveness and perseverance, for fans of The Great Believers and On Earth We're Briefly Gorgeous

Isaac is at a crossroads in his young life. Growing up in Missouri, the son of a caustic, hard-driving father, he was conditioned to suppress his artistic pursuits and physical desires, notions that didn’t align with a traditional view of masculinity. But now, in late ’80s Chicago, Isaac has finally carved out a life of his own. He is sensitive and tenderhearted and has built up the courage to seek out a community. Yet just as he begins to embrace who he is, two social catalysts—the AIDS crisis and Rodney King’s attack—collectively extinguish his hard-earned joy.

At a therapist’s encouragement, Isaac begins to write down his story. In the process, he taps into a creative energy that will send him on a journey back to his family, his ancestral home in Arkansas and the inherited trauma of the nation’s dark past. But a surprise discovery will either unlock the truths he’s seeking or threaten to derail the life he’s fought so hard to claim.

Poignant, sweeping and luminously told, Isaac's Song is a return to the beloved characters of Don’t Cry for Me and a high-water mark in the career of an award-winning author.

"A touching and intimate portrait of a young man's awakening written in beautifully transcendent prose. Isaac's Song is the kind of book you finish and then go back and read all over again." —Dolen Perkins-Valdez, New York Times bestselling author of Take My Hand

"Isaac's Song continues the tradition of Daniel Black making absolute beauty out of the so-called unspeakable. Here, though, the execution and soulful interventions create the most superb writing we've read in a long, long time. Daniel Black is a magician." —Kiese Laymon, bestselling author of Heavy: A Memoir


"Isaac's Song is an absolutely beautiful book. It's a beautiful song of generational pain and love, a novel that is thrumming with truth and life."—Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah, New York Times bestselling author of Chain Gang All Stars
 
"Isaac's Song is a beautiful, all-consuming novel about the complex relationships between fathers and queer sons, loss, grief, identity, friendship and love. I will read anything Black writes."—De'Shawn Winslow, award-winning author of In West Mills and Decent People


“A heartbreaking journey that grips and holds you to the bitter end like a weighted blanket, reminding me of the lyrics from a gospel song, ‘We Fall Down but We Get Up,’ and try again.”—Sanderia Faye, author of Mourner’s Bench


“As Isaac’s story unfolds, his song moves from its roots in pain, fury, and yearning and leads him toward knowledge, forgiveness, and a love of self that liberates as it lifts. This book is balm and tonic, impetus and light.”—Jabari Asim, New York Times Notable author of Yonder


"Isaac's Song is not just a novel; it is an intimately personal story buried inside a multi-generational saga. It is a detailed account of a journey of self-discovery and a collective oral history. Dr. Daniel Black beautifully chronicles one man's heroic quest to find the source of his generational trauma, a cure for his pain, and ultimately, himself."—Michael Harriot, New York Times bestselling author of Black AF History
 
“Isaac’s Song is the lullaby we all need and the healing balm for generations to come. Isaac’s life journey detangles with precise and mesmerizing language. Passages seem to melt together in a luscious, page-turning reading experience that one must consciously slow down to fully absorb. This riveting and important novel offers as its refrain one of life’s greatest lessons: true freedom and liberation can only be achieved through unadulterated self-love.”—Joyce White, author of Ecology, Spirituality, and Cosmology in Edwidge Danticat