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It's Hard Out There For a Soul Singer

April 19, 2009 12:35 am

LEONARD PITTS JR. should keep the day job.

After all, he is a Pulitzer Prize-winning columnist, read in some 200 newspapers.

He probably could quit, though, go into another kind of writing and still feed himself, if his first novel is any indication.

"Before I Forget" is the story of Mo Johnson, a soul star from the '70s who became famous mostly for one song. He's still recognized, long after his star has faded, and he's able to live fairly well on what he once did.

Mo has three major problems, though.

One is his son, Trey. In the book's early pages, he becomes involved in a robbery gone terribly wrong. Mo, his absentee father, blames himself and questions why he has never done right by Trey's mother, the love of Mo's rambling life.

Second is Jack Johnson, Mo's father, a man whose cruelty helped kill his wife and Mo's mother. Jack is dying, as the book begins, and he's asking for his only son, who hasn't seen him in decades.

The third problem is Mo himself. He is coming to grips with the terrible truth: He has early-onset Alz-heimer's. In the middle of his life, he's coming to grips with the fact that there won't be any golden years.

Pitts tells a marvelous tale of discovery, making all three James Moses Johnsons real as the middle and younger ones embark on a cross-country trip to Los Angeles to attend Jack's death.

Family road trips are great vehicles (pun intended) for fiction of all kinds. Parents and offspring reconnect. History seeps out. As novels go, "Dad," by William Wharton, is a great example of the genre. Or, in the nonfiction category, try "Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance," by Robert Pirsig.

This one is a worthy addition to the genre.

Trey doesn't understand his father, who doesn't understand his son, and nobody seems to understand Jack except an old family friend waiting in L.A. to set the record straight.

Stories are told, truths are revealed, accommodations are reached. The writing and pacing are right and the ending is not easy or expected.

Pitts gives us a searing, keen-eyed glimpse into a world where heartbreak loiters on the doorsteps of the innocent, where good intentions can be overrun like a brave but outnumbered army, where almost all the luck is bad.

Howard Owen is business editor of The Free Lance-Star and the author of eight novels.