Introducing My New Novel: Black and White and Read All Over

I have a new book coming out that I’m excited about. I want you to be excited too! Its title is BLACK AND WHITE AND READ ALL OVER. Pub date is May 1, 2026!! 

Some years ago, Susan, my wife, pointed out a footnote in a book she was teaching. I’d just finished a project, and she knew I was looking around for the next one. Having long-since known her startling awareness of a good story, I began my peripatetic lurching of discovery and research – one that’s directed only by curiosity, and is radically different from each book, play or screenplay that I write.

What I found at first was everything to know about one of the most bizarre, painful and infamous trials in United State’s jurisprudential history. But as I kept digging, reading something that stopped me cold, interrupting notes that I was writing and tearing off to find one fascination or another, I realized that the legal case was the proverbial tip of the iceberg. Above and beyond the trial, the revelations were about a profound and unique love story, compounded and imperiled by the conflicts of class, privilege and the culture of the times. And even more vital were intimate portraits of two very different families, each at the opposite economic extremity of that culture.

In 1921, Alice Jones, 22, met Leonard Rhinelander, 18. Alice was the daughter of immigrants (a British mother and a West Indian/English taxi driver), living in New Rochelle, N.Y. Leonard was the scorned scion of the Rhinelander family that owned or controlled more than one-third of Manhattan real estate and who fiercely protected their position at the absolute peak of their generations-long social, political and financial power. 

Alice’s and Leonard’s attraction to each other was instant; their affair was carnal. When discovered, the Rhinelander family forceably separated them for two years. Undeterred by time and distance, they then secretly married. They were blissfully happy for four weeks, until discovered by the press. From the first, journalists slanted daily exposés toward race, the notorious “one-drop rule,” and Alice “passing” as white despite her father’s decidedly dark skin.

The Rhinelander family forced Leonard to sue Alice for an annulment, claiming she had misled him about her racial makeup. The 1925 trial was sexually specific and through world-wide press coverage, it became infamous: Even the staid New York Times printed daily summations on its front page. The “mixed marriage” was put on display for the world to judge.

To prove that Leonard must have known Alice was of mixed blood before their marriage, she revealed evidence to the shocked jury in a way never seen again in American legal proceedings. Based on the actual trial of Rhinelander v. Rhinelander, my novel exposes the horrors of privilege and racism that fell upon Alice for merely falling in love.

I hope this gives you some idea of why I’m so excited about BLACK AND WHITE AND READ ALL OVER. If I’ve managed to draw you in to that excitement, please sign up for future blogs, author’s revelations, publication news, and even a way to order advance copies!

And please know that any comments that you send back, useable short reviews (yes, good and  bad), or book orders (!) will be hugely appreciated. I of course believe you’ll enjoy the book and learn a lot about our nation — what it was like a century ago – and I won’t dare mention all the continuing similarities to the Nineteen-Twenties that we’re living through today.