A racially charged killing in upstate New York in 1963 provides the backdrop to GOD'S NAME ISN'T GOD, an intense and thought-provoking novel that chronicles the twists and turns of American life in the latter part of the 20th century. Joe Goodman, a mixed-race kid coming of age in a Buffalo suburb in the 1970s, is between worlds and parents: his volatile Jewish father embodies dynamic defiance, while his gentle African-American mother counsels Quaker quietism and passive resistance to racial and societal injustice. Young Goodman, a sensitive introspective boy, experiences the pain of brutal oppression and racism, love and loss, before finally alienating both of his parents in his late twenties when he joins the Rock of Islam-a black separatist group led by a charismatic but shadowy former jazz musician-and becomes the militant Yusuf Shakir. The specter of violence haunts this distinctly American story, which unfolds amidst all of the major news events of several eras from the Civil Rights movement to Woodstock; from the Apollo missions to Watergate, from Stonewall to feminism; Jonestown to the birth of MTV. The novel culminates in the dissolution of the Goodman family on the eve of a new age in America, an age of terror, divisiveness and suspicion. GOD'S NAME ISN'T GOD is a sad yet spell-binding commentary on our national life and times.