The World According to Fannie Davis: My Mother’s Life in the Detroit Numbers

Novelist Davis (Into the Go-Slow) honors her mother in this lively and heartfelt memoir of growing up in 1960s and ’70s Detroit. Before there was the Michigan Lottery, there was the numbers—an illegal lottery based on three-digit numbers. As Davis notes, it was a “lucrative shadow economy” in African-American communities. Fanny Davis was a feisty and sharply intelligent woman who moved her family from Nashville, Tenn., to Detroit in the early 1960s. There, she learned the numbers ropes and set out to run her own operation; in a short time she was able to provide generously for her family with an upscale house, a stocked refrigerator, shopping sprees at tony department stores, and even a trip to Miami Beach’s Fontainebleau resort. Alongside her mother’s story, Davis chronicles the hardships African-Americans suffered—predatory real estate schemes, discriminatory treatment in stores, and police abuse. Looking back as an adult, Davis realizes that her mother took risks in running her business, but recalls fondly a childhood during which she always felt secure. This charming tale of a strong and inspirational woman offers a tantalizing glimpse into the past, savoring the good without sugarcoating the bad. Agent: Anjali Singh, Ayesha Pande Literary. (Jan.)