John Ed Bradley and I grew up in the same Louisiana small town; Opelousas.  Yet we have never met. The reason John Ed and I had no chance to meet is race.  John Ed is white of Cajun heritage, and I am a black-Creole.  Where John Ed would have gone either to the all-white (until 1968) Catholic school or the all-white (until 1970) public school, I went to the all-black Catholic school.  John Ed would have lived in one of the white sections of Opelousas, and I in one of the black sections. But to this racial structure John Ed was not oblivious.  He could not have been and have written his book, “Restoration,” which is a captivating, mysterious, rare novel of diversity.

Quickly and fluidly, John Ed sets the central cast of characters. Jack Charbonnet (Shar-bo-nay) and Rhys Goudeau (Go-dough) have just met and discovered their mutual knowledge of and interest in the paintings of the long dead (fictitious) New Orleans painter, Levette Asmore.  To tell us this story of the love for art, the greed fulfilled by some through art collecting, and the craft of art restoration, John Ed uses lively dialogue to give us an understanding of this world.  Rather than lecture us, John Ed uses Jack’s curious but amateur interest to give us insight into what goes on there.

Jack’s interest in Levette developed through his father who was a photographer and lover of Louisiana art. An art restorer, Rhys’ interest is both professional and deeply personal.  Levette committed suicide at the age of 23. His paintings are not only of unmatched aesthetic quality, they are also so rare collectors would kill, or at least spend very large sums of money, to own one.  Levette, as we come to know him in the novel, is best known for a set of paintings called the “Beloveds.”  Each is a painting of a young white woman who is portrayed in a way that suggest to all that Levette and the woman have just made a love so passionate and satisfying it shows on her face and in the glow of her skin.

It is the mystery surrounding Levette’s suicide and the discovery of a long lost Levette mural that drives this novel. But a number of mysteries unfold as we follow the attempts to uncover the true identity of Levette; the connection of Jack’s landlord to Levette; the discovery, heisting, and restoration of Levette’s mural; the stumbles in the waltz of romance between Jack and Rhys. And throughout, there is something going on that has to do with race.  Jack struggles to understand the significance of race when certain truths surface.  At one point Jack says to Rhys that he does not care about race and is puzzled when Rhys replies, “You would make a mistake not to care about race… there is no bigger issue in my life.”

I have no doubt that John Ed Bradley is from Opelousas.  By sprinkling the culture in the novel to create a strong Louisiana atmosphere, he shows a deep sensitivity to the bayou land.  John Ed not only mentions Opelousas, Abitas Beer and crawfish, but he describes the look, smell, serving and eating of gumbo with an intimacy that can only come from childhood experience.

In particular, John Ed is sensitive to the unique dynamics of race in the bayou country that presaged the state of American diversity today.  He has not forgotten his encounters with race that stretched him beyond the simplistic way most are taught to think about race in America. Down the bayou, you see, a person can be white-skinned with blue or green eyes and still be black. Although many think that what makes Louisiana exotic is the way we cook, the truth is that what makes Louisiana unique is the mix of cultures in constant contact creating a new, always renewing diversity.

John Ed highlights this diversity by letting his characters encounter the troubling but hidden facts of racial blending and bending, and face the paradoxes it introduces into their lives. Jack Charbonnet, especially, learns that it’s not just what meets the eyes, that matters. By his experiences with Rhys and the whole cast of characters, Jack is (and so we are) forced to think deeply on the point of classifying people by skin color. A truly relevant issue today with the growing number of children who acknowledge the complexity of their racial heritage by having the audacity to demand that the census categories be taken beyond “other” or even “mixed.” With this theme and its literary elements “Restoration” (now in paperback), is an entertaining, thoughtful piece of fiction that acknowledges and critiques the concept of race, making it clear that what we should be talking about in America is the diversity of experiences, ideas and values that makes each of us unique.

When I was NCSU’s Vice Provost for Diversity and African American Affairs, I fought for the university to accept an approach to diversity that requires whites, blacks, Indians, and others to interact and through those interactions face their misconceptions about race, ethnicity and gender.  My observation, you see, is that unless we are pushed to do it, we run from opportunities to eyeball how our perceptions and social lives have been hobbled by the history of race in America.  So when people are not guided to see that they are using false categories to interact with real people, we leave them no opportunities to learn and change. But upper administration of our university was fearful that authentic interaction would cause trouble.  Maybe, though, with the coming change in leadership at the Chancellor’s level, NCSU can begin to enact an authentic diversity effort.

On a more personal note, having read his wonderful novel I think it is time that John Ed and I, we two Opelousas boys, meet.  We need to get together over some gumbo, to talk about writing, art, life and how we ended up away from Opelousas yet still continually restored in our hearts the hard lessons we learned there, about the fiction of race.