Skin Deep

Eric Trujillo

Description

Wayne Mallory is a news reporter for The Chicago News Register on vacation at his parents’ luxurious Louisiana enclave, a heaven for wealthy African-Americans in the racist south.
While there, he learns of the murder of a white sheriff’s deputy in the nearby town and goes there to get the details. Also on his mind is finding his first true love, a swarthy, curly-haired Cajun boy with eyes the color of amethysts named Andy Bourgeois, whom he met when he was fifteen and Andy, thirteen.
Both of his quests are fulfilled when he finds Andy, who is the police department’s public liaison officer.
Their reunion leads them onto paths seldom traveled in Louisiana, some of which are the best left alone.
They are taken on a voyages that spans three-hundred years, back to colonial West Africa, where three little African sisters are kidnapped by Portuguese mercenaries and brought to the New World, where, separated, they are the seeds for three very distinct families;
The Mallorys, who retained their African racial characteristics and prospered despite them,
The Catashes, who long ago relinquished any ties to Africa and would go to any length, including murder, to stifle anyone who dares to remind them those ties; and
The Bourgeois, who have no idea of their African ancestry.
SKIN DEEP is a tapestry of interwoven stories and interwoven lives that crisscross like the warp and weft of a line Persian rug.
The suffering and degradation of slavery, the lives and advantages of the Free People of Color in New Orleans, and the ordinary everyday lives of African Americans past and recent, that are revealed in all of their color and condor as the three sisters, now old women, tell their descendents of their lives since their capture.
SKIN DEEP follows those descendents down to the late Twentieth Century.
Throughout, Wayne and Andy are trying to establish a lasting, loving relationship as they try to solve the mystery of the deputy’s murder and the other, subsequent murders in what may become a bloofbath for untold riches and political power. It will keep you intrigued until the very end.

Sujets

• Adventure (Guyana)
• Work of Art: The Next Great Artist
• Skin Deep
• Adventure
• Fiction
• Action

Informations

• Publié par: Xlibris US
• Date de parution: 29 juillet 2022
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781664130500
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 1 Mo

Extrait

SKIN DEEP
Volume One
Eric Trujillo

Copyright © 2022 by Eric Trujillo.
 
ISBN:
Softcover
978-1-6641-3051-7

eBook
978-1-6641-3050-0
 
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the copyright owner.
 
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to any actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
 
Any people depicted in stock imagery provided by Getty Images are models, and such images are being used for illustrative purposes only.
Certain stock imagery © Getty Images.
 
 
 
 
 
Rev. date: 07/08/2022
 
 
 
 
 
Xlibris
844-714-8691
www.Xlibris.com
818035
CONTENTS
About The Author
Dedication
Acknowledgements
Joy Boy
Foreword
Chapter One
ABOUT THE AUTHOR

With his first novel, JOY BOY , Mr. Trujillo became a pioneer in a heretofore untapped literary genre, that of the gay, black, male detective. SKIN DEEP will not be the last.
Writer/photographer, Eric Trujillo, was born in southern Louisiana and educated in Louisiana and Mexico City. He speaks English and Spanish fluently and three other languages with varying degrees of fluency.
He worked for thirty years in various investigative positions, including twenty-two years with the Illinois Department of Children and Family Services (DCFS), several of which were in the Uptown area of Chicago, where JOY BOY, his first novel, took place.
After retirement, he returned to, and currently lives, in swampy southern Louisiana, where this novel, SKIN DEEP , takes place.
Mr. Trujillo is the father of Jared, an attorney, his pride and joy.
Mr. Trujillo is also a fine arts photographer, specializing in flower portraits, landscapes, and the nude male.
A canophile, Mr. Trujillo has never met a dog he did not love but his special love is for standard poodles, which he has owned, bred, and shown.
Throughout his life, he has had seventeen (and counting), of which, Leo, a black male, is currently his only roommate. The others are always in my heart.
DEDICATION
This book is dedicated to the victims of hate and of the Middle Passage; both those who made it across and those who did not. To the victims of slavery, Jim Crow, and the everyday racism that still persists in present-day America.
To the victims of homo-odio who have been persecuted from time immemorial in almost every country on the planet for being who they are and loving whom they were designed by Nature to love.
To the Black Bourgeoisie as it existed in 1950s and ’60s Louisiana, when I was growing up. They lined the barbed wire of segregation and restriction with velvet and circled around us like a herd of musk oxen with horns down and pointing outward to protect us youngsters from the ugly realities of the world around us.
They helped us understand that, despite the restrictions we faced, there was nothing we could not accomplish. They taught us to believe in ourselves and to strive to reach the top.
To my son, Jared. I did the best I could for you, and my sister, Iris S. who takes my ribbing in stride and gives as well as she gets.
To my oldest unbroken friendship, Carol Simmons, a honky-tonk girl in spirit if not in practice. True friendship does not know color.
In loving memory of my parents, the two tigers who protected and shielded me from all of the dangers that could befall a gay black, boy in 1950s Louisiana.
It is also dedicated to my two good friends who entered the year 2021 in good health but did not exit it alive, Mr. Christopher Todd Trant, and Mr. Russell Joseph Crochet, for whom race, color, class, age, and sexual orientation did not exist. Requiescat in pace.
ALSO BY THIS AUTHOR:
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
My heartfelt thanks to two of the world’s true living angels, Mrs. Bonnie B. Martiny for her insightful suggestions regarding the course of my novel and for all of her help and support, and Ms. Eileen Augustine, who gave up many of her nights and weekends to sit with a dying friend without complaint when his own family could not be bothered. Greater love hath no woman (or man)!
I’m a Luddite. I’d still be writing with pen and paper, were not for Bonnie’s computer help. Or maybe on an old Underwood.
I owe a huge debt of gratitude to Mr. Russell Crochet for his help with Cajun French and rural Louisiana Cajun life but he died too soon. I would especially thank him for suggesting the name of the settlement, “Toe-Toe Town,” which really exists in unincorporated Assumption Parish, Louisiana. Sleep on, my brother. May you rest in peace!
Mrs. Murielle Pierre-Louis also helped me with some of my French language quandaries. Merci, beaucoup, Madame la Comtesse!
Mr. Milton Wayne Franklin provided me with honest critiques of the excerpts I sent him. His opinions helped me keep my perspective. His insights helped me understand that the poor come in all races and colors and that poor whites are in the same predicament as poor blacks.
Also by Eric Trujillo
JOY BOY
Alex Ashby, a drop-dead gorgeous 22-year old male prostitute, incarcerated In Chicago’s Cook County Jail accused of three murders he did not commit, tells his life story to an African-American investigative reporter at one of Chicago’s three major newspapers.
The reporter is the only person who believes that Alex did not commit the murders and sets out to find the real killer, who is known by the other hustlers as THE NIGHT CRAWLER.
Alex Ashby tells a horrendous story of a childhood of severe physical and sexual abuse by his father and uncle while the reporter, with the help of Alex’s friend, Tom Pappas, trolls the depth of Chicago’s seedy Uptown neighborhood where many white Southerners have settled, trying to find, not only the killer, but the only witness to the crime, a 12-year old male hustler, and is quickly drawn into a nether world of murder and child-selling, and taken on the ride of his life in the infamous Uptown street known as Blood Alley, where even angels fear to tread.

COMING SOON
EXCERPTS OF REVIEW OF
JOY BOY
 
A NOVEL BY ERIC TRUJILLO
By
Bertha Jackson, Bookshelves Moderator, Online Book Club
(18, Sept., 2021)
JOY BOY by Eric Trujillo has many positives and negative aspects. Eric Trujillo did an excellent job with character development....Many of the characters are hillbillies and the author uses that dialect throughout the book.
The book is written in the first tense from the investigative reporter’s perspective and flows smoothly between the investigation and his interviews with Alex (the Mississippi hustler accused of killing three people, two prominent Chicagoans and a pizza boy). I liked that the author used italics and bold print to emphasize some of the events in the book...
I was emotionally affected by the debauchery, physical and sexual abuse, murder, drug abuse, bigotry, discrimination, and racism in this book....I would have preferred that he (author) had left something to the reader’s imagination.
The scenes where young boys are raped or willingly participated in sexual activities were disturbing because they were graphic. This criticism is subjective because it is my personal preference for books. Having said this, I do believe readers need to be aware of this content.
To be objective and fair, I rate this book 4 out of 4 stars because the positive aspects outweigh the negative.
I recommend this book to mature adult readers who want to understand more about sex trafficking or sexual abuse of young boys. I recommend that sensitive readers not read this book because there is gory content involving murders and rape....
{NOTE: The author worked for 22 years as a sex abuse investigator for the Illinois Department of Children and Family Services and 8 years as an investigator of discrimination for the Illinois Department of Human Rights. Most of what he wrote is based on first or second-hand knowledge}
OTHER REVIEWS
“I was attracted by the cover and title of the book and after reading and I’m not disappointed at all. The book discussed many important issues which should be addressed in this world.”
By Rishi, 23 Nov 2021
“I appreciate the author’s bringing up the issues which mostly get (over) shadowed or suppressed.”
By Priya Singh 24 Sep, 2021.
I loved read(ing) this book...to know more about how the author tackled the issue.”
By Elisa Joy Ocasla, 25 Sep, 202l
“The book is a good one.”
By Nazzy, 02 Oct 2021
“Your review made me ask a whole lot of questions about the book. I c an’t wait to satisfy my curiosity. I’m reading this book next.”
By Elendu Ekechukwu, 19 Oct 2021
“From the cover, it’s a colorful book written in a great descriptive style. Awesome.”
By Humera955, 07 Oct 2021
“Fantastic book. Written about something most of us know nothing about and don’t want to know anything about. These themes the author writes about are universal and right under our noses like rats and roaches. They only come out in the dark of night.”
By R. C448, 01, 2020
FOREWORD
It’s my turn to hurl yet another brick at the wall of American racism/classism/homo-odio/colorism, and all of the other “isms” that make up this land of ours.
Ideally, I’d like to hurl the brick and hide my