I still look back on that night, although not as often as I once did.

‘Memory is a queer creature, an eccentric curator. Time waits for no man, and Roy finds that the world – and his place within it – changes irrevocably. Roy’s life is suspended, but Celestial’s must go on: she becomes a successful artist and grows ever closer to Andre. The lost art of letter-writing is still very much alive between incarcerated persons and their loved ones who have no access to modern communication, and in this case they provide documentation of deep emotional turmoil and the fraying of the ties that bind. We also witness the slow disintegration of the couple’s communication through their letters. Instead, what follows is first-person accounts from Roy, Celestial and Celestial’s old friend Andre, who are all struggling to navigate this new reality. This isn’t a courtroom drama or an overt polemic. He is a victim of America.’īut the way in which Roy’s wrongful conviction and imprisonment transpires is not dwelled upon in the narrative: it almost seems like the inevitable, an inescapable fate in contemporary America. ‘I have one thing to say to you, as a black man: Roy is a hostage of the state. ‘You know what they say: if you go five miles out of Atlanta proper, you end up in Georgia.’Īfrican-American men are incarcerated at a vastly disproportionate rate in the United States, and Roy’s imprisonment and 12-year sentence show that even being HBCU-educated, articulate and holding a good job – the poster boy for upward mobility – won’t save you from the gross injustices of the American justice system. While staying in the fictional town of Eloe, Louisiana, visiting Celestials’ parents, Roy will be accused of raping a woman in a hotel room – a crime he did not commit. Their marriage is still very much in its infancy when something life-altering happens. Roy is charming, proud, and stubborn, Celestial his independent, artistic, talented wife. Roy and Celestial are newlyweds living in Atlanta.

An american marriage a novel