Publisher's Synopsis
Just Call Me Whitey is set in a half-forgotten America at the cusp of tectonic national-and generational-changes that still deeply resonate. It reveals a time and place when America was only first emerging from its sordid history of bigotry and hate, where a black man could not become President of the United States and was routinely denied even society's most common conveniences such as the use of a lunch counter or a public drinking fountain. The story focuses on the life of a white youth, Bill Doyle, the son of a tenant farmer, as he learns to relate his own life to the lives of others without using the color bar. It was a time of hope, expectation and yearning for something new, but not all that was new was welcome. Children raised in one society found themselves as adolescents in another. Part of Billy Doyle's childhood was lost to him and could only be found in his disturbing dreams until he began to understand the changes that time and the move from Ohio to Maryland had wrought in his life.
