Rack

Franklin James is eight years old the first time his grandfather puts a cue stick in his hands. In the back room of a barbershop in Clinton, Louisiana - a town too small for a bus station - a man named Big Frank teaches his grandson the geometry of pool, the physics of angles, and the only truth that never changes: the table don't lie.Four summers of lessons. Then Big Frank dies at the table with chalk on his fingers, and the cue goes in the closet, and the boy goes cold.Six years later, Franklin arrives at a prestigious New England university on a scholarship that covers tuition but not food. Hungry, invisible, and alone, he stumbles into a fraternity basement, picks up a warped house cue, and breaks a rack of balls - and everything Big Frank built in him comes roaring back. What starts as survival becomes something more: a hustler's education in bar rooms and back tables, a coach who sees the ghost of Big Frank in his stroke, a woman who sees through every performance he's ever given, and a shot at the national stage where the underground game his grandfather mastered can finally step into the light.RACK is a novel about inheritance - what gets passed from hand to hand, generation to generation, grandfather to grandson. It is a story about hunger, hustle, and the devastating distance between being seen and being known. About a young Black man navigating a world that looks at him and sees less than he is, and a pool table that sees exactly what he is and demands he prove it, every shot, every time. Darryl Wayne Townsend Jr. is the author of seventeen books spanning literary fiction, thrillers, novellas, and nonfiction. His work lives in the spaces between people - the things they can't say, the things they won't say, and the things they say to the wrong person. His novels include Still Water, Rare Pull, Taylor, Glass Empire, and Heavy Load. His nonfiction includes The Catalog Mindset and Don't Blow the Bag. He is the founder of Polymath Portfolio Group LLC and hosts the podcast Wait a Minute, Bitch on Spotify. He lives in Seattle. He is not done.