The Confessions of Matthew Strong

One could argue the story begins the night Allegra Douglass is awarded Distinguished Chair in Philosophy at her top-tier university in New York - the same night her grandmother dies - or before that: the day Allie left Birmingham and never looked back. Or even before that: the day her mother disappeared. But for our purposes Allie's story begins at the end, when she is finally ready to tell her version of what happened with a white supremacist named Matthew Strong. From the beginning, Allie had the clues: in a spate of possibly connected disappearances of other young Black women; in a series of recently restored plantation homes; in letters outlining an uprising; in maps of slave trade routes and old estates; in hidden caves and buried tunnels; and finally, in a confessional that should never have existed. They just have to make a case strong enough for the FBI and police to listen. This is when Allie herself disappears. Allie is a survivor. She survived the newly post-Jim Crow south, she survived cancer, and she will survive being stalked and kidnapped by Matthew Strong, who seeks to ignite a revolution. The surprise in this doesn't lie in the question of will she be taken; it lies in how she and her community outsmart a tactical madman.

Genre: Mystery

"The grandeur of the Harlem Renaissance beautifully backgrounds The Confessions of Matthew Strong. Fitting because, like Rudolph Fisher and Zora Neale Hurston, Power-Greene knows from slave shackle to noose to the nightly news, the black experience in America has been a perpetual crime story. This moving and exceedingly sharp thriller shreds the pretense that America's murderous history is a 'whodunit' and not a 'wedunit.'" - Paul Beatty

"A piercing, affecting novel about sisters and family, race and power, and the impossibility of choosing to escape an identity or create one. A chilling, suspenseful tale that is both thought-provoking and immersive and will keep readers glued to the page. Highly recommended." - Abby Collette

"Ousmane K. Power-Greene is a writer who always thrills and challenges. His work is thoughtful and provocative, moving and meaningful. He's the real deal." - Victor LaValle