James A. Terry

The Blue Terraplane James A. Terry

The Blue Terraplane is a 89 page novel. This novel is written in the local unadorned Black dialect spoken in 1937 Bronzeville, Chicago. Bishop Flipper was a poor runaway southern Black orphaned teenager who encountered a starving crippled old Black man with a three-legged dog. After sharing his meager food with this old man, the old man promised the orphaned teenager a blessed life in Chicago for six and a half years. On July 12, 1937, Madame Madelyn, a frail pipe-smoking elderly woman, invited Bishop to her to mysterious storefront business. Madelyn, a voodoo priestess, warned her guest that his blessed six-and-a-half year period would end on July 13, 1937. This old lady offered the young man a battered old bronze magic ring, which she claimed would protect him from any harm. At noon, July 13, Bishop encounters Raoul La Croix and Paloma Issert. Raoul was huge menacing-looking, baldheaded Black man with a long serpentine stiletto who was treating the helpless Paloma Issert in the local Illinois Central train station. Paloma Issert was a young girl, from Algiers, Louisiana, who was desperately attempting to escape from Raoul. Quickly, Raoul became Bishop's adversary, while Paloma became his femme fatale.