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Title: Shadow Lessons

Author: Tim Reardon

Narrator: Gregg A. Rizzo

Format: Unabridged

Length: 9 hrs and 13 mins

Language: English

Release date: 02-17-14

Publisher: All Things That Matter Press, Inc.

Genres: Fiction, Contemporary

Publisher's Summary:

When high school English teacher Sean Cullinan comes across a specialty publisher looking for fresh African American voices, he decides to submit his latest manuscript. One problem: Cully is white. Enter Janine Russell, black lieutenant in the San Francisco fire department and long-time friend of Cullinan. Together, they create a literary hoax that eventually fuels a national race debate.

In Shadow Lessons new author Tim Reardon delves deep into the heart of the volatile American race conversation in a work that overflows with humor, honesty, and courage.

Members Reviews:

This is worth buying and reading.. new author and excellent

Excellent book. Great writer.

Five Stars

Great story line, editing could have been better.

A Slippery Slope

While not exactly a mystery Shadow Lessons most reminds me of noir. The politics of race and race relations is the crux of the story, but it is really only the raison d'etre for a story about what happens to people as a result of the unintended consequences of their actions. Our 'hero' is a San Francisco high school teacher and coach and a desperate 'wanna be' author who takes advantage of his friendship with a black female firefighter on the fast track within the department. He can't get published and she gets no respect from the old boys network that surrounds her. His solution: submit his book with an attractive, educated and successful black woman as author. The good news: the strategy is wildly successful! The bad news: the strategy is wildly successful and everything begins to fall apart and in unintended ways as both our 'hero' and his 'author' are co-opted by folks...black militants and right-wing media 'stars' with their own agendas...none of which are what either of them had in mind when it all began. Slippery slope, indeed. Read it; it's fun and it's thought provoking.

Like Stockett, Gladwell, Webb on Race

I read this terrific novel in less than a day, partly out of personal interest. I went to the same San Francisco high school as the author, and taught and coached at another Bay Area Jesuit prep. While the novel is spot on in its description of San Francisco details, it deserves to be compared with several other authors and books that have established a national reputation on the same topic -- Webb (Fields of Fire; Born Fighting), Gladwell (Outliers), Gallagher (Kaboom), Stockett (The Help).

Gladwell/ Stockett

Reardon's work addresses in fiction some of the same uncomfortable themes that Malcolm Gladwell confronts in his non fiction work, Outliers. Gladwell's non fiction book, Outliers, concludes with a chapter that reveals a stunning fact: his great grandmother was a black slave bought by his Irish great grandfather. Using the greater flexibility of fiction, Reardon's novel explores the same charged themes as Outliers. Reardon's prologue starts with a similarly jarring statement, "I guess you could say that my grandparents on both sides were pretty much your run of the mill racists." Too, his prologue states his main argument -- that the tensions between races are not black and white, but shades of grey.

Money is a persistent motive throughout Reardon's novel.