We are very pleased to talk with Frank S. Joseph, long-time
writer who has recently penned his first novel, “To Love
Mercy.” Welcome to Reader Views Frank.
Juanita: Thanks for talking with us today Frank. Please tell
us the story within the pages of “To Love Mercy.”
Frank: “To Love Mercy” is a fable about blacks and whites,
Christians and Jews, conflict and forgiveness. It tells the story
of two young boys - one black, one white - who meet under
the worst of circumstances, in a darkened parking lot following a Chicago White Sox game on June
15, 1948. The black child, whose nickname is Sass, is injured accidentally and the white family takes
him - most unwillingly - to a nearby emergency room. But the white child, whose name is Steve, can’
t get the incident out of his mind. The next day, Steve finds his way to Sass’s hospital bedside for a
tense encounter. That would be the end of it, except Steve’s grandfather Nate accuses the black child,
Sass, of stealing a precious silver talisman from him. Nate threatens to throw Sass in jail. So Steve
finds Sass and the two of them go off on a search for the silver talisman, which takes them across a
hostile city over a long day and night. At the end, these two boys have survived disasters and come to
an understanding of their world that is deeper than that of their own mothers and fathers.
Juanita: Tell us the significance of the contrast between the innocent young friends and the racial
inspired, fearful parents?
Frank: The parents are victims of the pressures of society, racial and religious. But the boys are
seeing these things for the first time, and we readers see these things as they see them, through their
eyes.
Juanita: What was your experience and history with Chicago?
Frank: The story in “To Love Mercy” is a story of what my childhood might have been. Like Steve,
I grew up in the ’40s and ’50s in Hyde Park, a comfortable neighborhood on the South Side of
Chicago that was then heavily Jewish. But my grandfather Nathan Joseph owned and operated a
movie theater in the heart of Bronzeville, the ghetto where just about every black Chicagoan lived
during the ’40s. Where I lived, in Hyde Park, was just 30 blocks from the States Theatre, but a world
away. What if little Frankie Joseph had met a kid like Sass? How would my life have changed?
Juanita: Have you based any of the characters on anyone you know? Is there any of you woven
into any of the characters?
Frank: Absolutely. Almost all the major characters are based on real people in my growing-up.
Steve, of course, is based on me. The grandfather, Nate, who owns the movie theater, is based on my
own grandfather, Nathan Joseph, although the character of Nate is meaner than my own grandpa
was. But Sass is pure fiction. One day this kid appeared in my head and started talking. I just wrote
down what I heard.
Juanita: That is very interesting. The dialogue of Steve and Sass is very accurate in its depiction of
how innocent children would talk. Tell us a little more about these characters.
Frank: Steve is nave - he is constantly putting himself in harm’s way because of his innocent and
trusting nature - but he’s worldly too. Coming from a comfortable background, he’s been places and
done things. Sass, on the other hand, hasn’t even been outside his own neighborhood … has never
been the Loop 30 blocks north, doesn’t even realize there’s a lake - big one - 10 blocks east. But Sass
sees everything with perfect clarity. It’s easy to B.S. Steve, but no one can ever B.S. Sass.
Juanita: You did extensive research for this book. Tell us about this process, and the inclusion of
the very powerful Afterword with historical pictures and quotes.
Frank: The first three chapters or so just poured out of me. Then I hit a wall. I needed to start
writing the Bronzeville characters and I realized I just didn’t know them well enough. So I put on my
reporter hat. I started calling black-oriented organizations and offices - the public library branch in
Bronzeville, the offices of the politicians who represent the area, etc. - asking for leads to people who
grew up in Bronzeville in the ’40s and ’50s. With much luck I found a half-dozen such people -
ordinary folks, with extraordinary stories to tell - and interviewed them on tape. I also spent hours at
the Chicago Historical Society, especially in the 1995 records of the Douglas-Grand Boulevard
Neighborhood Oral History Project. I listened to hours of tapes and read dozens of transcripts. From
these I extracted the stories that appear in the Afterword - a history of Bronzeville in the voices of the
people who lived there. And we illustrated the Afterword with black-and-white photos, mostly taken
by a white photographer named Wayne Miller. Miller took these photos over a two-year period, then
they just went into a drawer - they weren’t seen or shown for some 40 years. When Miller was in his
80s, the photos were published by the University of California Press as “Chicago South Side, 1946-
1948.” We selected seven of these marvelous photos to illustrate the Afterword.
Juanita: Frank, the Bronzeville area in 40’s Chicago was then rich in black culture. Why were you
drawn to this time and place?
Frank: Because of the time I spent there. When I was a little kid, my dad would take me down to my
grandpa’s theater, where I could go up into the projection booth and watch the movie. I would watch
as the operator, George Machree, lit the carbon arc that movie projectors used to use, an exciting and
terrifying process Steve describes in the novel. And out on the street, I would see this incredible
liveliness that made Bronzeville truly “Chicago’s Harlem.” But I have to add, Bronzeville was a scary
place for a little white kid. My mom and dad were truly liberal people for their time, but when my dad
would take us down there in the car, he’d say, ‘Lock the doors.’ This disconnect between what my
parents said and how they behaved may actually have been the seed from which this novel grew.
Juanita: How do the families come to terms with their fear?
Frank: The families in the novel never do. They go at one another with insults and epithets. It’s the
kids who finally reach an understanding of the world they live in.
Juanita: Frank, what is your statement to readers through the story of “To Love Mercy?”
Frank: As people read this novel, I’d like them to be thinking how, in some ways, the world has
come an incredibly long way since June 1948 … and in some ways, it hasn’t changed at all.
Juanita: For people who haven’t traveled to Chicago, what is Bronzeville like today and how has it
changed?
Frank: It’s a shadow of its former self. Starting in the early ’50s, urban renewal began mowing the
neighborhood down. The construction of the Robert Taylor Homes - giant skyscraper projects that
became the crime-ridden shame of public housing and eventually were torn down - that construction
destroyed most of the businesses along State Street, including my grandpa’s theater. The theater was
boarded up some time in the ’50s and the building was torn down around 1961 or 1962, leaving
almost nothing in a block that had once been one of the busiest in the city of Chicago. Now, some 50
years later, a real estate boom is going on in Bronzeville, which after all is located only 3 miles
south of the Loop. But only about 20% of the original housing stock exists; the rest was urban-
renewed to the ground decades earlier. There are still blocks and blocks of vacant lots.
Juanita: You have had a significant writing career. Tell your readers about your writing history.
Frank: When I was 21 and a creative writing major in college, I wanted to be a novelist. Instead, I
became a journalist. I had a wonderful career, first with the City News Bureau of Chicago, then the
Chicago bureau of The Associated Press - where I covered the Democratic National Convention
disorders, the Detroit riot, Dr. King’s march into Cicero Illinois and many other eruptions of the mid
and late ’60s. I moved to the Washington DC area, where I still live, and became an editor at The
Washington Post during the Watergate years. Then I went into the newsletter business, first as a
journalist, now as a publisher. But I never stopped thinking about the novel I wasn’t writing. And at
last, I’ve written it.
Juanita: Congratulations for not forgetting about your dream. Was there one particular thing that
inspired this novel?
Frank: “Huckleberry Finn” was the book I had in mind when I wrote “To Love Mercy.” Sass, in his
clear-eyed appraisal of the world and his moral center, is like Huck. And like Huck and Jim, Steve and
Sass are a white and a black person thrown together on a quest. I think the Great American Novel
already has been written, and it is “Huckleberry Finn.” I would not dare compare my talents to Mark
Twain’s, but his book inspired me.
Juanita: Frank, you covered many of the hot issues during the 60’s. Some would say there are
many similarities to the 60’s and the times we find ourselves in today. I would imagine you have a
unique and informed perspective on how things have changed yet stayed the same in this country.
Would you share your thoughts?
Frank: Race was the big issue facing America then, and so it remains. I say that knowing many will
disagree with me, but here’s why I believe it: The race issue never goes away. It just sits there like the
800-pound gorilla in the living room, because we aren’t willing to have an honest discussion about it.
In some small way, I’m trying to start such a discussion.
Juanita: How long was this book in the making, and what was your inspiration for writing “To Love
Mercy?”
Frank: It took about three years from start to finish of the first draft. Of course, after it was
accepted for publication, the publisher wanted significant changes. My inspiration was my feeling that
blacks and whites see the same events differently … that children have their own way of seeing the
world, which is different from the way we adults see the world … and that disconnect I mentioned
between what people say about race and religion, and how they actually behave.
Juanita: Frank, who do you hope reads your book?
Frank: Obviously, Chicagoans will get an extra kick out of this novel, with its many recreations of
beloved places long gone - Riverview Amusement Park, for example, and the old Maxwell Street flea
market, not to mention Comiskey Park, home of the White Sox, and Bronzeville itself. But beyond
Chicago, I think any adult who ponders the way things are in the America we live in - as well as any
thinking teen-ager - will enjoy reading “To Love Mercy.”
Juanita: Do you have plans for another novel in the future?
Frank: I have one half-written already. It’s set in 1965 and it draws on my experiences at The
Associated Press, covering the ghetto riots. At first I thought this novel was my effort to understand
what was going on during those riots - how people who had next to nothing to begin with, could burn
down what little they did have. But as I reread this draft, I’m taken with its humor and romance. So I’
m trying to bring out those qualities along with the serious stuff.
Juanita: How can your readers contact you or find out more about “To Love Mercy?”
Frank: Just go to http://tolovemercy.com
Juanita: Do you have any last thoughts for your readers?
Frank: This has been a pretty serious interview, Juanita, so I just want to let readers know that, hey,
this is a pretty funny novel. Check out Steve and Sass’s theological discussion about hot dogs, for
example. And also, I think the novel is a pretty easy read. It was important to me to write a book that
would be hard to put down - a page-turner. Readers will have to decide for themselves whether I
succeeded. I hope they’ll try.