When America was drawn into World War II in 1941, after the bombing of Pearl Harbour, there was racial segregation in Florida. Yet a substantial number of Black men enlisted to fight for a country which treated them as second class citizens or worse. Tammy Huf’s The Colour Of Home centres on three such men while drawing a love triangle that’s equal parts complex, enthralling and heartbreaking: taking readers to the battlefield and back home again, traumatised and with much to process.
The plot sees Cora reluctantly wed a man she doesn’t love – Roscoe, a friend of her brother Benny. Able to pass as white, Benny is enlisted into the war on this basis, keeping his racial identity under wraps whilst serving; this will have repercussions for him further down the line. And then there’s Lee, the man Cora truly loves – and vice versa.
With each of these four characters telling their side of the story in alternate chapters, The Colour Of Home functions simultaneously as love story and historical fiction: as moving as it’s shocking, one can envisage Steven Spielberg adapting it for the big screen.
