Award Winning Canadian Poet turned Author George Elliot Clarke’s GEORGE & RUE is about a death that brims with fierce vitality and dark humor. Infused with the sensual, rhythmic beauty that defines Clarke’s writing, this is a literary debut that is marked by celebration—and controversy...

George Elliot Clarke was thirty-four years old when, shortly before his mother’s death, she told him for the first time the story of his matrilineal first cousins, George and Rufus Hamilton. In a robbery gone wrong, the brothers committed a “slug-ugly”crime on January 7, 1949, drunkenly bludgeoning to death a taxi driver for the money in his wallet. The brothers, partly descended from African-American slaves and native Mi’kmaq, were both hanged for the killing later that year.

GEORGE & RUE shifts seamlessly back into the killers’ pasts, recounting a bleak and sometimes darkly comic tale of victims of violence who became killers, a black community too poor and too ashamed to assist its downtrodden members, and a white community bent on condemning all blacks as dangerous outsiders. Written in a lyrical, bluesy style that Clarke calls “blackened English,” GEORGE & RUE is an extraordinary debut novel about death that brims with a fierce vitality.

Remember!  You don’t have to have an iPod to listen and view this show.  You can have the show each week right on your computer!  All you need to do is download iTunes , which is free.  Then click on the iTunes Music Store link below to subscribe.  The subscription to our show is also free!

If you're a TiVo® subscriber with a broadband-connected TiVo® Series2™ DVR, you will be able to enjoy our show in your living room! Just go to the Online Services section (Music, Photos & More), select Podcasts, and type in the following URL: http://feeds.feedburner.com/authorsinyourpocketshow.

Listen to George Elliott Clarke’ s Podcast from our web site at www.bookclubinyourpocket.com
or find us on the iTunes Music Store.

About the Author:

George Elliott Clarke is the author of six books of poetry, including Execution Poems, winner of the 2001 Governor General’s Award. A seventh-generation African-Canadian, Clarke was born in Windsor, Nova Scotia, descendent of a black community that emigrated north during the American Revolution. Previously an assistant professor of English and Canadian Studies at Duke University, Clarke is now the E. J. Pratt Professor of Canadian Literature at the University of Toronto. George & Rue is his first novel.

His revered works include Whylah Falls (poetry), Beatrice Chancy (play), Quebecite (libretto), Odysseys Home: Mapping African-Canadian Literature (essays), and George & Rue (novel).

About The Good Book Club:                             

Inspired by Oprah, three friends began organizing a book club.  The Club was named "The Good Book Club" because the goal was to read good books, eat good food, and have a good time. 

In 2000, the GBC partnered with PageTurner.net and became a charter member of the African American Book Club Summit.  This historical event was a national effort to create an alliance between book clubs, authors and independent booksellers.