Book excerpt: When Michael follows his dying father to North Carolina, a lifetime of lies begins to unravel. His pursuit of his father's past – haunted by voodoo, adultery and murder – takes him to a place called Hayti, once the most prosperous black community in the South. Now the mysteries of Michael's own heritage become a matter of life and death, as racial conflicts barely restrained since the 1960s erupt again. Rooted in the true story of the US government's urban renewal policy and its disastrous aftermath, Black & White is a literary thriller, a family saga, and a searing portrait of institutionalized hatred.