Leaving Atlanta

Tayari Jones

Mar 2006 · Recorded Books · Narrated by Myra Lucretia Taylor, Robin Miles, and Kevin R. Free

About this audiobook

From the author of the Oprah's Book Club Selection An American Marriage, here is a beautifully evocative novel that proves why Tayari Jones is "one of the most important voices of her generation" (Essence).

It was the end of summer, a summer during the two-year nightmare in which Atlanta's African-American children were vanishing and twenty-nine would be found murdered by 1982. Here fifth-grade classmates Tasha Baxter, Rodney Green, and Octavia Harrison will discover back-to-school means facing everyday challenges in a new world of safety lessons, terrified parents, and constant fear.

The moving story of their struggle to grow up—and survive—shimmers with the piercing, ineffable quality of childhood, as it captures all the hurts and little wins, the all-too-sudden changes, and the merciless, outside forces that can sweep the young into adulthood and forever shape their lives.

About the author

Tayari Jones was born on November 30, 1970 in Atlanta Georgia. She attended Spelman College, University of Iowa, and the University of Georgia. She later attended Arizonia State University to earn her MFA. She went on to teach creative writing at the University of Illinois and George Washington University. Her first novel, Leaving Atlanta, was written in 2002 while she was a graduate student at Arizonia State University. It was about the Atlanta Child Murders of 1979-1981.Her other title's include: The Untelling, Silver Sparrow, and An American Marriage. She has been awarded the Hurston/Wright Award for College Writers, the Hurston/Wright Legacy Award for Debut Fiction, the Lillian Smith Book Award, and the Radcliffe Institute Fellowship.