author of Driving the King
1:30 PM on Friday, October 23
Ravi Howard returns to the symposium with his second novel, Driving the King, the story of a World War II veteran who is down on his luck in Montgomery, Alabama, until he lands a job as chauffeur and bodyguard to Nat King Cole. Through the lens of his main character, Nat Weary, Howard explores the segregated South of the ‘40s and ‘50s, as well as the somewhat freer world Weary finds when he lands in Los Angeles, with its own version of intolerance and discrimination. Howard first came to the symposium with his debut novel, Like Trees Walking, the fictionalized account of a 1980s lynching in his native Mobile, Alabama.