In the debut literary novel, MOTOWN MAN, Bradley and Abby are an interracial couple looking to build a life together in a fading factory town rife with veiled racial tension, marked by uncertainty and on the edge of losing its identity. However, to Bradley’s younger brother, James, their relationship is a fool’s errand. During an unseasonably cold week in November 1991, the true value of their bonds is revealed and hardened.
Campbell’s creative nonfiction and essays have appeared in Belt Magazine, Forge Literary Magazine and Gravel Magazine. He is a contributor to Belt Publishing’s Midwest Architecture Journeys (edited by Zach Mortice), published in October 2019. Campbell was a staff writer for the Flint Journal, Lexington Herald-Leader and Detroit Free Press. He was also an electrician at AC Spark Plug, formerly a division of General Motors, before moving into journalism.
“The title sprang from a conversation between two main characters, and the colorful way in which Black folks talk in relaxed settings and comfortable surroundings,” said author Bob Campbell. “In addition, Motown, as in the Motown Sound in music, signifies an enlightened, almost enchanting, moment in American history, particularly in the early to mid-1960s. On one level, it was a period of great possibilities and the promise of a ‘Great Society’. Motown, with those sweet and buoyant lyrics, provided the soundtrack for that sense of hope and shared humanity that cut across racial lines. Of course, there was so much more to Motown, a depth and evolution, than that which tends to exist in the popular imagination.”
MOTOWN MAN is available now and is published by Urban Farmhouse Press (Windsor, Ontario).
