Synopsis "The Autobiography of Obsidian Dumar"
Obsidian Dumar III, world weary, Pulitzer Prize winning author, professor of literature at Brown in Providence, RI is stuck. After instant success with his first book his publisher asked him to write a memoir. Like many an author before him he is finding it extremely difficult to write about himself. To tell his own story requires reliving painful memories he'd long ago consigned to his private dustbin. Except as he ponders more about his life resurrecting events, images from his past, there have always been seemingly dark forces at play surrounding Dr. Dumar from a very young age. Then the letter arrives from Lula Mae Sykes. A person who says they are related and his grandfather Obsidian Dumar has died and left him to be the caretaker of the family secret. It is this letter which sets him on his epic journey through time, space and culture. He follows clue after clue contained in bits 'n pieces of his grandfather's "autobiography." The only family he has ever known is the Griffins of Atlanta. The story is well known by now. Left on the doorstep of the Griffins a well-known, well-connected Atlanta family, the note tied around his neck attached to a string of canine teeth read simply. "His name is Obsidian Dumar III." Well it was certainly provocative for the time and place, mid 1940's Atlanta, "White Family Adopts Negro Baby Left in Basket on Doorstep." Many people would refer to him jokingly, derisively as The Black Moses. But this was no random choice by any means. He was left with The Griffins for a reason. Finding out that reason would now again consume him. The story takes us from 18th Century Portugal, Ireland, and Western Africa of the old world to Montserrat, New Orleans, Atlanta, and The Piney Woods of Georgia in the new. We travel back to 2500 BCE as well as see events unfold in the recent past and in the here and now. Until finally, Obsidian's destiny is revealed and he must chose to save himself and humanity in the process.
