ALL-BRIGHT COURT by Connie Porter (HarperPerennial:...

ALL-BRIGHT COURT by Connie Porter (HarperPerennial: $10). In this impressive first novel, Porter uses a company housing project in Buffalo, N.Y., as a metaphor for the aspirations of urban blacks. Abandoned by white tenants, All-Bright Court becomes a symbol of promise to the first black steel workers who arrive from the South during the late ‘50s, their hopes tied to the booming postwar economy. As the steel industry falters, the world of Samuel Taylor’s family seems to crumble as unemployment, violence and drugs reduce the court to a slum. The Taylors face a graver challenge from within when school officials give their son Michael a scholarship to a posh prep school: Michael becomes both a hope for the future and an alien changeling when his exposure to upper-middle-class white values cuts him off from his family and his ethnic heritage.