Could you find the courage to do what's right in a world on fire?
Pulitzer-winning journalist and bestselling novelist (Freeman) Leonard
Pitts, Jr.'s new historical page-turner is a great American tale of race
and war, following three characters from the Jim Crow South as they face
the enormous changes World War II triggers in the United States.
An affluent white marine survives Pearl Harbor at the cost of a black
messman's life only to be sent, wracked with guilt, to the Pacific and
taken prisoner by the Japanese . . . a young black woman, widowed by the
same events at Pearl, finds unexpected opportunity and a dangerous
friendship in a segregated Alabama shipyard feeding the war . . . a
black man, who as a child saw his parents brutally lynched, is
conscripted to fight Nazis for a country he despises and discovers a new
kind of patriotism in the all-black 761st Tank Battalion.
Set against a backdrop of violent racial conflict on both the front
lines and the home front, The Last Thing You Surrender explores the
powerful moral struggles of individuals from a divided nation. What does
it take to change someone's mind about race? What does it take for a
country and a people to move forward, transformed?