THE GOOD NEGRESS by A.J. Verdelle...

THE GOOD NEGRESS by A.J. Verdelle (HarperPerennial: $10; 299 pp.). The narrator of Verdelle’s engaging first novel is Denise “Neesey” Palms, an adolescent African American raised in rural Virginia by her grandmother and sent to Detroit in 1963 to join her mother and stepfather. Neesey seeks to escape the grimy alienation of the city through her grandmother’s regimen of cleaning and cooking--until a demanding teacher challenges her to aspire to become something more than a domestic servant. Reflecting on the differences between her comfortable Southern slang and the staccato rhythms of formal English, Neesey comments, “Sound to me like somebody in a hurry to leave the table, rushin’, got the chair cocked on the back legs, and they mind already in the next room.”