When the novel opens, we find the matriarch in the middle of giving birth to her seventh child that she is sure will finally be a girl. What transpires is the story of one man, one dog, and how they save each other-in ways they ever could have expected. ( From the publisher. 'Perfect Peace' is a set in the 1940's in a rural black community and explores what happens when a boy is raised as a girl, then abruptly told the truth. It is Chance’s unique spirit that helps him escape and puts him in the path of Adam. He’s been born and raised to fight and seldom leaves the dirty basement where he is kept between fights.īut Chance is not a victim or a monster. It validates their existence and suggests to the world that they are not only human, but very possibly divine.

This novel is dear to me and close to my heart because it speaks for those who have been silenced. Meanwhile, the Peace family is forced to question everything they thought they knew about gender, sexuality, unconditional love, and fulfillment. Perfect Peace is one telling/imagining of that great survival. It’ll be a little strange at first, but you’ll get used to it, and this’ll be over after while.'įrom this point forward, his life becomes a bizarre kaleidoscope of events. I am rereading this incredible novel about a young boy in the Deep South who was raised until he was 8 as if he were a girl. But that ain’t what you was supposed to be. When the seventh child of the Peace family, named Perfect, turns eight, her mother Emma Jean tells her bewildered daughter, 'You was born a boy. Daniel Black is a native of Kansas City, Kansas, yet spent the majority of his childhood years in Blackwell, Arkansas. The heartbreaking portrait of a large, rural southern family’s attempt to grapple with their mother’s desperate decision to make her newborn son into the daughter she will never have.

Perfect peace by daniel black