How long does it take to read Those Bones Are Not My Child?
A Novel
Those Bones Are Not My Child by Toni Cade Bambara takes about 12 hours 24 minutes to read at 250 words a minute.
About 12 hours 24 minutes
A week or two of reading
First published 1999. 676 pages, about 185,900 words.
25 days at 30 minutes a day
Estimate based on 275 words per page.
At other speeds
| Slow, 150 words a minute | 20 hours 39 minutes |
| Average, 250 words a minute | 12 hours 24 minutes |
| Fast, 400 words a minute | 7 hours 45 minutes |
The page count is the median across 6 editions, so your copy may differ. How we calculate.
About the book
Written over a span of twelve years, and edited by Toni Morrison, who calls Those Bones Are Not My Child the author's magnum opus, Bambara's last novel leaves us with an enduring and revelatory chronicle of an American nightmare.In a suspenseful novel of uncommon depth and intensity, Toni Cade Bambara renders a harrowing portrait of a city under siege. Having elected its first black mayor in 1980, Atlanta projected an image of political progressiveness and prosperity. But between September 1979 and June 1981, more than forty black children were kidnapped, sexually assaulted, and brutally murdered throughout "The City Too Busy to Hate." A separated mother of three holding down several jobs, Zala Spencer has managed to survive on the margins of a flourishing economy until she awakens the morning of Sunday, July 20, 1980, to find her teenage son Sonny missing. As the hours turn into days, Zala realizes that Sonny is among the many cases of missing children just beginning to attract national attention. Growing increasingly disillusioned with the authorities, who respond to Sonny's disappearance with cold indifference, Zala and her estranged husband embark on a desperate search. Through the eyes of a family seized by anguish and terror, we watch a city roiling with political, racial, and class tensions.From the Trade Paperback edition.
Subjects: African Americans, African Americans in fiction, Fiction, Murder, Missing children, Investigation
