Green Sun

The long-awaited return of acclaimed novelist Kent Anderson. Oakland, California, 1983: a Vietnam veteran-turned-police officer strives to be both a good cop and a good man.

Before Hanson arrived in Oakland, he had already seen some of the worst of humanity on a tour of duty in Vietnam and a stint in the Portland, Oregon police department. And then he moves to California to join the under-funded, understaffed Oakland police force. Unlike nearly all of his fellow officers, Hanson deliberately chooses to live in the precinct that he patrols; he takes seriously his duty to serve and protect the black community--his neighbors--in East Oakland.

Hanson befriends a neighborhood boy, embarks on a romantic relationship, and tries to remain in a notorious drug dealer's good graces, all while struggling to stay a good cop despite the forces of hate and violence threatening him from all sides.

GREEN SUN is bracingly relevant to both the political and cultural moment we're currently living in: Hanson is a white cop who meets black civilians not as antagonists, but as allies against his becoming the type of cop that he hates most.

Kent Anderson is a U.S. Special Forces veteran who served in Vietnam and a former police officer in Portland, Oregon, and Oakland, California. With an MFA in creative writing from the University of Montana, he has taught college-level English and written screenplays. His two previous novels, Sympathy for the Devil and the New York Times Notable Book Night Dogs, both feature Hanson. Anderson may be the only person in U.S. history to have won two NEA grants for creative writing as well as two Bronze Stars. He lives in New Mexico.