A singular memoir
highlighting "the outstanding humanity of black America"
that tells the story of one unforgettable mother, her devoted
daughter, and the life they lead in the Detroit numbers of the 1960s
and 1970s (James McBride)
In 1958, the very
same year that an unknown songwriter named Berry Gordy borrowed $800
to found Motown Records, a pretty young mother from Nashville,
Tennessee borrowed $100 from her brother to run a Numbers racket out
of her tattered apartment on Delaware Street, in one of Detroit's
worst sections. That woman was Fannie Davis, Bridgett M. Davis'
mother.
Part bookie, part
banker, mother, wife, granddaughter of slaves, Fannie became more
than a numbers runner: she was a kind of Ulysses, guiding both her
husbands, five children and a grandson through the decimation of a
once-proud city using her wit, style, guts, and even gun. She ran her
numbers business for 34 years, doing what it took to survive in a
legitimate business that just happened to be illegal. She created a
loving, joyful home, sent her children to the best schools, bought
them the best clothes, mothered them to the highest standard, and
when the tragedy of urban life struck, soldiered on with her stated
belief: "Dying is easy. Living takes guts."
A daughter's moving
homage to an extraordinary parent, The World According to Fannie
Davis is also the suspenseful, unforgettable story about the lengths
to which a mother will go to "make a way out of no way" to
provide a prosperous life for her family -- and how those sacrifices
resonate over time. This original, timely, and deeply relatable
portrait of one American family is essential reading.