It Gives You Strength by Philip Raymond Brown

During World War II he served in the U.S. He lived there a short while before enlisting in the armed forces. After accompanying his friend Raymond ('Mouse') to Pariah, which resulted in the death of Mouse's stepfather, Easy decided to leave Houston to move to Dallas, Texas. After a few weeks, Easy ran away from Skyles's farm and spent the rest of his childhood and adolescence living on his own in the Fifth Ward of Houston, Texas. Easy never found out what became of him.Įasy's older half-brother and half-sister went to live with cousins in El Paso while Easy was taken in by his mother's brother-in-law, a violent man named Skyles. After the scuffle Easy and his father ran off, with his father kissing Easy one last time, and telling him to go home. When the man called his father the N-word his father punched him. Easy had accompanied his father to his job at the slaughterhouse and saw his father argue with the man.

The fight was the result of a dispute with his father's supervisor over earnings. His mother died when he was eight years old soon afterward his father fled to escape lynching after fighting with a white man. Nevertheless, in 2013 a new Easy Rawlins novel entitled Little Green was published, followed by Rose Gold (2014), Charcoal Joe (2016), and Blood Grove (2021).Įasy Rawlins was born on November 3, 1920, in New Iberia, Louisiana. Mosley once stated he intended to bring the character into contemporary times, but later said the 2007 novel Blonde Faith, which is set in 1967, would be the last. Mosley has written fourteen novels and a collection of short stories featuring Rawlins, his most popular character. While Rawlins is clearly in the tradition of Raymond Chandler's Philip Marlowe and Ross Macdonald's Lew Archer, he differs sharply from these earlier fictional detectives in that Rawlins is an unlicensed private investigator (though he acquires a license late in the series) with no background or training in law enforcement. The mysteries combine traditional conventions of detective fiction with descriptions of racial inequities and social injustice experienced by African Americans and other persons of color in the Los Angeles of that period. He is featured in a series of best-selling mysteries set from the 1940s to the 1960s. Rawlins is an African-American private investigator, a hard-boiled detective and World War II veteran living in the Watts neighborhood of Los Angeles.

Fictional character Ezekiel 'Easy' RawlinsĮzekiel 'Easy' Porterhouse Rawlins is a fictional character created by mystery author Walter Mosley.

It Gives You Strength by Philip Raymond Brown