Zora Neale Hurston’s Final Decade

Using letters, photographs, and personal interviews, Moylan fills in the blanks about the last decade of writer and anthropologist Zora Neale Hurston, who moved to Florida after being exonerated from false charges of child molestation in Harlem. Among other activities, Hurston sought justice for a black woman in a racially-charged trial, spoke out against school desegregation, and was instrumental in introducing the nation's first affordable, high-quality black baby doll. Though eccentric, complex and at times out of sync with some of the mainstream beliefs of her contemporaries, Moylan shows that Hurston continued to be an intelligent and vital thinker, writer, and citizen up until her death in 1960. Annotation 穢2011 Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)