Sign-In
Cart
Bastard: 1975 - 1981
Hardcover
Fiction AnthologiesGeneral Parenting
Publisher Price: $32.50
Publisher: Black Ink LLC
Published: May 1 2026
Pages: 392
Weight: 1.53
Height: 1.00 Width: 6.00 Depth: 9.00
Language: English
Bastard A coming of age novel set in southeastern Virginia in a long shadow of uncertainty during the late 1970s early 1980s.
Holland E. Patterson, called Hep, is growing up where fathers disappear, childhood ends early, and boys learn how to survive long before they learn why. Raised by a single mother stretched thin by work and circumstance, and a sister facing her own set of obstacles, Hep comes of age in a neighborhood governed by unwritten social rules, quiet violence, and the weight of what goes unsaid.
Hep and his friends steal, laugh, fight, and survive their way through a landscape shaped by housing projects, schools that expect little, and churches that offer both refuge and contradiction. Authority arrives late. Consequences arrive early. And every lesson, whether learned through violence, love, or loss, leaves a mark. Hep pushes back against the expectation the world sets for him while navigating and building his on expectations for himself. Friendship becomes protection. Music becomes refuge. Memory and cultural trauma becomes inheritance.
Bastard offers no soft landing, its emotional honesty is merciless. It does not seek to explain poverty and fatherlessness but show how young boys develop under these conditions. It does not seek to explain itself, just give an episodic view of the structural conformity built into the social, institutional, cultural and physical spaces its characters occupy.
Unflinching, intimate, and deeply humane, Bastard is a patient portrait of Black boyhood rarely rendered with such transparency and honesty. Written with clarity, restraint, and fierce authenticity, Bastard refuses easy answers or sentimental resolutions. Instead, it offers something rare, a truthful account of how boys are shaped by the worlds that raise them-and trauma they inherit.
Also in
Fiction Anthologies
On Quality: An Inquiry Into Excellence: Unpublished and Selected Writings
Pirsig, Robert M.
Pirsig, Wendy K.
Hardcover
James Weldon Johnson: Writings (Loa #145): The Autobiography of an Ex-Colored Man / Along This Way / Essays and Editorials / Selected Poems
Johnson, James Weldon
Hardcover
Frankenstein, Dracula, Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde
Stevenson, Robert Louis
Stoker, Bram
Shelley, Mary
Paperback
Sez I to Myself: The Collected Essays of Frank and Malachy McCourt
McCourt, Malachy
McCourt, Frank
Hardcover
Here in New England: Unforgettable Stories of People, Places, and Memories That Connect Us All.
Allen, Mel
Paperback
The Greek Tragedies: Seventeen Plays by Aeschylus, Sophocles, and Euripides
Sophocles
Euripides
Aeschylus
Paperback
Learn Russian with Beginner Stories: Interlinear Russian to English
Van Den End, Kees
Hyplern, Bermuda Word
Gettys, Serafima
Paperback
The Fall of the House of Usher and Other Writings: Poems, Tales, Essays, and Reviews
Poe, Edgar Allan
Hardcover
Obvious Adams -- The Story of a Successful Businessman: New Business Edition
Updegraff, Robert R.
Paperback
Bookin' in the Big House: What I Learned Leading a Women's Prison Book Club
Devoto, Pat Cunningham
Paperback
Sherlock: Short Story Anthology: Ten New Cases. Ten Master Storytellers. One Immortal Detective.
The Conan Doyle Estate
Hardcover
Japanese Folktales for Language Learners: Bilingual Legends and Fables in Japanese and English (Free Online Audio Recording)
Sato, Anna
Sato, Eriko
Paperback
The Valancourt Book of World Horror Stories, volume 1
Pedraza, Pilar
Fager, Anders
Cubas, Cristina Fernández
Paperback
The Serpent Mound, Adams County, Ohio (Facsimile Reprint)
Randall, Emilius Oviatt
Randall, E. O.
Paperback