The Unheralded King of Preston Plains Middle

A lushly told reflection on a young man’s passage into manhood

From irascible patriarch Alonzo “Grandpa Tuke” Tooker on down, the Hopkins family—altruistic Dottie, dissatisfied Chester, and their sons Langston and Trajan—are no typical residents of the Thames River Valley town of Preston, Connecticut. This is perhaps most true of Langston, a boy whose peers declare him to be the “King of Preston Plains Middle School”: a vibrant young man dedicated to his dream of competing in Olympic-level Tae Kwon Do, as well as to his growing passion for his beautiful classmate Angelica Chu.

Yet when a terrible accident brings Langston’s Olympic dreams to an abrupt close, Trajan Hopkins, the family’s youngest son, must learn to cope alone with the coming trials of adult life: his slowly changing relationship with self-destructing childhood friends, his initiation into the world of women at the hands of a former teacher, and his growing awareness of the risky world outside his family’s circle within the shadow of a Haitian drug lord’s operation and the often-threatening local police who watch over it.

Jedah Mayberry’s The Unheralded King of Preston Plains Middle marks the debut of a striking new voice in American fiction: intelligent, richly cadenced, slyly funny, and deeply thoughtful about what it means to be a son, a father, and a man.