'Infidelity' Author Looks at Race

Ann Pearlman, who made a quarter-million-dollar paperback sale to Broadway last year for Infidelity, originally published by a small press, had a new title snapped up by John Wiley editor-in-chief Carole Hall. According to her agent, Jodie Rhodes on the Coast, Hall moved swiftly to sew up a book called Living in a Black and White World while other interested editors were still getting readings. The deal, which went down on Christmas Eve (and was communicated to us on Christmas Day!) was for world hard/soft rights, with Rhodes hanging on to performance. Pearlman's story is of her own mixed-race marriage, her experience in raising mixed-race children and her encounters, as a social worker, with warring black and white gangs; it examines racism in every aspect of American life. Hall plans to publish in spring of next year.