Every Third House — Donald Freed

A Black Panther revolutionary, Leon Hurley Howard, aka “Masai,” is being released from prison after serving a 20-year sentence for conspiracy to kidnap Henry Kissinger. He returns to New Haven, Connecticut, to be with Vivian Battle -- his unindicted co- conspirator -- a celebrated White poet who loved and continues to love him. But the FBI is surveilling them, and the lovers also face mistrust from the Black community, and, of course, the White power structure. Isolated and embattled in Vivian's house, they struggle to deal with the terror of love and revolution in America. Every Third House is the first major novel to deal with that profound crisis of identity that began in the 1960s and whose ramifications are still shaking us, personally and politically, in 2005. The writing style of this political love story is a riveting mix of voices: personal narratives; FBI bureau-speak; diaries, love letters, and prison memories: a deep vision of the American heart in conflict with itself, from the prize-winning historian and playwright who was there and lived and wrote through the crisis.