Dying for a Change [Paperback]

Summer, 1965 and the living is far from easy. The Civil Rights Movement occupies the press. The Watts Riot is heating up Los Angeles and Chicago is hotter than little sister with the pox in August. The word of the day, in polite company is Negro, nigger if the atmosphere aint so hospitable. Fag, dyke, queer are freely used by everybody, in the know or not. Cause it ain’t no know—because nobody cares. Unless of course you’re in the know as Chan Parker and Henrietta Wild Cherry are. Chan Parker (named after the widow of jazz great, Charlie Parker) might not be as political as Henrietta but she knows who she is and where she’d like to go. Up. Chan has her own thing going running numbers for mobster Al Frattini. She’s made enough money to keep a comfortable lifestyle going. Nothing average about Chan, a tall handsome, Negro lesbian. She owns an apartment building and a closet full of clothes, not secrets. She prefers quiet no-fuss nights alone with jazz. Her most prized possessions: a shiny black-on-black convertible T-Bird and a reel-to-reel collection of music. But Chan is dying for a change. She needs to get away from the mob. Fed up with the schemes and scams that keep Negroes broke and broken, she wants do something more legit, but what. When Miss Dove, famous drag queen from a North Side bar is murdered, Henrietta Wild Cherry begs Chan to act. Chan and Henrietta go on a mad romp through Chicago, from low life bars to mob dens to find the murderer. But what they discover along the way will have them running for their lives. And leaves Chan wondering of she’s gone to die for this change.