After the Lights Go Out

A harrowing and spellbinding story about family, the complications of mixed-race relationships, misplaced loyalties, and the price athletes pay to entertainfrom the critically acclaimed author of Three-Fifths Xavier Scarecrow Wallace, a mixed-race MMA fighter on the wrong side of thirty, is facing the fight of his life. Xavier can no longer deny he is losing his battle with chronic traumatic encephalopathy (CTE), or pugilistic dementia. Through the fog of memory loss, migraines, and paranoia, Xavier does his best to stay in shape by training at the Philadelphia gym owned by his cousin-cum-manager, Shot, a retired champion boxer to whom Xavier owes an unpayable debt.Xavier makes ends meet while he waits for the call that will reinstate him after a year-long suspension by teaching youth classes at Shots gym and by living rent-free in the house of his white father, whom Xavier was forced to commit to a...