Kansas City Author Pens East Of Troost Opus

Thankfully, there's still summer reading out there with a local spin. 

However . . .

The skeptic in us thinks that this white lady might be congratulating herself just a bit too much about living in a tough neighborhood when TENS OF THOUSANDS of people do exactly the same thing without having literary ambitions. 

Then again . . .

We appreciate a unique perceptive and artfully crafted words . . .

Barker hopes East of Troost will help readers understand more about the early years of integration and how they inform racist attitudes today. “From a distance, it looks like white residents were cruel and Black people brought in crime and falling property values,” Barker says. “Many people don’t see how orchestrated it all was, by banks and real estate agents and ‘city fathers.’ But everyone I talk with about the book has some bit of truth, some personal memory that they can hang this story onto and get a broader feeling for why things are still so fraught.”

Read more via www.TonysKansasCity.com link . . .

Searching for Home East of Troost Avenue

Writer and former urban planner Ellen Barker is tapping into one of America's most painful histories in a new novel, East of Troost (She Writes Press, Sept. 6), about a middle-aged white woman who returns to her childhood home east of Kansas City's Troost Avenue-a real-life racial and economic dividing line in the Missouri city.