Stewart Tolnay

Less Than Righteous Stewart Tolnay

Less Than Righteous is a story about America from the 1940s through the 1960s, but with disturbing relevance for the present day. The multi-threaded story unfolds through the experiences of its small cast of central characters. It is a story that crosscuts time periods, locations, generations, races, social classes, and that involves difficult moral dilemmas. Mose Booker, born and raised in Oconee County, Georgia, served in the U. S. Army's first all-black tank battalion in Europe during World War II. When the war ends, and before returning home to Georgia, Mose visits New York City's Harlem which piques his curiosity about moving to the North. Back in Georgia, Mose weds Dorothy Turner, the daughter of a sharecropping couple who lives near the Bookers' farm. After marrying, Mose and Dorothy leave Georgia in search of greater opportunity and racial tolerance in the West. Their son, Otis Booker, born in Oconee County but raised in the Pacific Northwest, enlists in the Army to fight communism in Vietnam, shortly after graduating from high school in Everett, Washington. The quarter century that separates the father's and son's experiences during war and peacetime saw dramatic changes in the lived experience of African Americans. However, some things changed very little. Less Than Righteous examines the personal meaning and consequences of these transitions and continuities from the perspective of the Booker family (Mose, Dorothy, Otis, and daughter Debbie), Otis's white girlfriend Cindy Castle, and Otis's white friend Dylan Terry. As Otis and Cindy learn, one thing that had not changed very much is widespread intolerance for interracial romance. The book's surprising ending is a logical, but troubling, outcome of Otis's, Cindy's, and Dylan's unlikely friendships and the society in which they unfolded.