Leroy Something That Rhymes

The Johnson Family Saga

The novel LEROY is the story of a young African American of the same name raised and educated in France. His parents are both African Americans. His mother is an international civil servant with UNESCO and his father is a successful cabaret owner in Paris.

The novel opened in the main square of Saint Tropez France where Leroy is convinced that his neighbor, Eric, has just made a homosexual overtures towards his adolescent son. Leroy overcomes reticence to make a scene and a fear that as a black he is helpless to provide protection even for his son. This leads to flashbacks in which Leroy family life and his education in France are reviewed. Leroy was raised in an upper class neighborhood of Paris and attended schools frequented by privileged children. He acquired refined manners plus a superior cultural education that contrasted with that of his parents. This led to problems of identity that are treated in the novel. Leroy received an excellent higher education and married a beautiful French woman with a similar educational background who come from a family with a left winged political history. With the help of his father, brother, son and wife, he became a successful businessman and mayor of a large French city. Yet he is haunted by the fear that his off springs will be intellectually inferior because of their race. He is greatly influenced by the book; The Bell Shaped Curved and much of the novel are reactions, not necessarily negative, to assertions made in the work.

As Leroy moves up politically and financially. Nevertheless, he discovers racism in France unlike that which he parents knew in the United States. Because he doubts his hereditary intelligence, he compensates by untiring hard work. He works very hard on his job and coped successfully with the problem of certain potential customers being reticent to deal with blacks. He surmounts all difficulties, shrewdly purchases stock options in the firm for which he works from fellow employees and eventually finds himself in reaching distance of acquiring a controlling interest.

Eventually he gains control of the French company where he suffered racial prejudice. With the help of the mysterious Swinborn Foundation, a non governmental organization whose manifest goal is to assistance the United States government with matters it approves but are too delicate for direct involvement. At Leroy fathers request, the Swinborn Foundation takes charge of making Leroy an important political figure in France.

There are two subplots. The first concerns Leroy 14-year-old son, Gaetan, who is putatively sexually abused by Eric, a 40-year old French scholar. Eric is arrested and discovers that his fate strongly depends on what will be most favorable for Leroy political ambitions. Gaetan is a particularly mature and brilliant young man who cooperates with agents of the Swinborn Foundation to best exploit his relationship with Eric in order to help his fathers political aspirations.

The second subplot involves Leroy father, Johnny, and his contribution to the breaking up of the Soviet Union. Johnny was a front man for a CIA operation to purchase various Soviet arms for use by forces fighting against the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan. A surface to air missile that past through Johnnys hands was used to shoot down an American airplane. This led to Johnny incarceration which had a negative effect on his sons political aspirations followed by a very positive effects when friends of the CIA cleared him and tried to compensate him for his inconvenience by helping his son with his political and business career in France.

Leroy struggles is not only to succeed but also to belong, to be accepted by society. His feeling of non-acceptance is manifest by his feeling that he does not have a single close friend either among Frenchmen or in the African American community in France.