Leonard Pitts

Leonard Pitts reads from his new novel, Before I Forget.

In this novel from Pulitzer Prize winning journalist and syndicated columnist Leonard Pitts, Mo Johnson, a faded soul star of the '70s with early-onset Alzheimer's, takes his 19-year-old son on a cross-country road trip to visit his estranged father. This in-depth anatomy of black fatherhood is a brilliantly plotted multigenerational road story spanning rural Mississippi in the '40s, South Central L.A. in the '50s, the '70s soul music scene, and present-day L.A., Vegas, and Baltimore.

Leonard Pitts writes for the Miami Herald. He is the author of Becoming Dad: Black Men and the Journey to Fatherhood.

Recorded On: Wednesday, May 27, 2009