The last time he saw his father, Henderson Freeman was bolting from his family home in Halifax, swearing that he’d never return. But no matter where he ran or who he became — a soldier in World War II, a political activist in New York, a rail porter on transcontinental trains — Henderson can’t shake his father’s voice, advising, arguing ― calling him to service for his community.

When this voice goes silent, Henderson knows that his father is dead. He returns home to deliver a eulogy, the highest duty of a Black son to his father, but how can he find the right words to describe Anthony Freeman, the enigmatic archbishop of the Abyssinia Church?

Cecil Foster is internationally acclaimed author, academic, journalist, and public intellectual in the areas of multiculturalism, race, ethnicity, immigration and social identities. His non-fiction work They Call Me George was nominated for the Toronto Book Award, and his novel Sleep On, Beloved was shortlisted for the Ontario Trillium Book Prize. Foster is a professor of transnational studies at State University of New York at Buffalo and splits his residences between Buffalo, New York, and Waterdown, Ontario.