Daddy Was a Number Runner: A Novel

This modern classic is 'a tough, tender, bitter novel of a black girl struggling towards womanhood' in 1930s Harlem-with a foreword by James Baldwin (Publishers Weekly).

Depression-era Harlem is home for twelve-year-old Francie Coffin and her family, and it's both a place of refuge and the source of untold dangers for her and her poor, working class family. The beloved 'daddy' of the title indeed becomes a number runner when he is unable to find legal work, and while one of Francie's brothers dreams of becoming a chemist, the other is already in a gang. Francie is a dreamer, too, but there are risks in everything from going to the movies to walking down the block, and her pragmatism eventually outweighs her hope; 'We was all poor and black and apt to stay that way, and that was that.'

First published in 1970, Daddy Was a Number Runner is one of the seminal novels of the black experience in America. The New York Times Book Review proclaimed it 'a most important novel.'