American Beach opens with the killing of an unarmed black motorist by white police on a Florida resort island. It's the emblematic race confrontation of the 1990s, but Rymer's examination turns up everything but the ordinary. His journey leads us through ghostly plantation cemeteries, sance parlors, black resorts, European opera houses, Harlem salons, America's newest tone, and its oldest incorporated black city. We meet black pirated and planters, witness the incendiary death of the world's first black (and pioneer woman) aviator, the boardroom deliberations of the Walt Disney Company, and the posthumous but victorious last crusade of a prominent black novelist.

Along the way, we are guided by the most extraordinary real-life Southern cast since Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil, including Florida's first black millionaire and his great-grandfather, a flamboyant pauper who lives on a chaise lounge on the beach, from whence she strives to salvage her history and rescue her imperiled culture. As Rymer brilliantly shows, no matter what corner of America of which walk of life we may be from, it's our culture and our history as well.

About the Author: Russ Rymer's articles have appeared in The New Yorker, Harper's, Health, Vogue, The Sciences, the Washington Post, the New York Times, and other publications. His first book, Genie : A Scientific Tragedy, was a National Book Critics Circle Award nominee, received a Whiting Writer's Award from the Mrs. Giles Whiting Foundation, and was selected as a Grand Livre du Mois in France. American Beach is his second book. He lives in Los Angeles.

Written & narrated by Russ Rymer - Abridged Nonfiction - 2 CASSETTES - 3 hours

Publisher, Harper Audio (November 1998)