title: Free Burning: A Novel
author:  Bayo Ojikutu 
description: Tommie Simms is going down the ladder faster than he went up in Ojikutu's second novel (after 47th Street Black). Pushed into college by his addict mother, Tommie finds success working at an insurance company. Living in Chicago's Four Corners neighborhood with wife Tarsha and their baby girl, post-9/11 layoffs hit and Tommie scrambles to find employment. He begins selling marijuana for his cousin Remi and, after his arrest by a corrupt white cop named Weidmann, Tommie arranges a meeting between Remi and Weidmann, who wants in on Remi's action. This infuriates Remi's partner and half brother, Westside Jack. Jack pressures Tommie into helping him set up Weidmann by secretly filming him having sex with an underage girl. Getting deeper into the Chicago underworld, Tommie struggles to find his place-does he belong in the working week or on the streets? Tommie's narration merges urban cynicism with a densely crosshatched, riffing style reminiscent of Leon Forrest. Tommie is a character mentally stuck between two worlds, and his stasis eventually infects the energy of the story, which doesn't resolve so much as wind down. <br />Copyright  Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
zlib_text: > > > > ![](Images/image00122.jpeg)
  
  > > THIS IS A BORZOI BOOK
  
  > > PUBLISHED BY ALFRED A. KNOPF
  
  > > Copyright © 2020 by Megha Majumdar
  
  > > All rights reserved. Published in the United States by Alfred A. Knopf, a
  > division of Penguin Random House LLC, New York, and in Canada by Penguin
  > Random House Canada Limited, Toronto.
  
  > > [www.aaknopf.com](http://www.aaknopf.com)
  
  > > Knopf, Borzoi Books, and the colophon are registered trademarks of Penguin
  > Random House LLC.
  
  > > Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
  
  > > Names: Majumdar, Megha, author.
  
  > > Title: A burning / Megha Majumdar.
  
  > > Description: First edition. | New York : Alfred A. Knopf, 2020.
  
  > > Identifiers: LCCN 2019039498 (print) | LCCN 2019039499 (ebook) | ISBN
  > 9780525658696 (hardcover) | ISBN 9780525658702 (ebook) | ISBN 9781524711788
  > (open market)
  
  > > Subjects: GSAFD: Suspense fiction.
  
  > > Classification: LCC PS3613.A35388 B87 2020 (print) | LCC PS3613.A35388
  > (ebook) | DDC 813/.6—dc23
  
  > > LC