FILM TIE-IN. We are in Harlem, the black soul of New York City, in the era of Aretha Franklin and Ray Charles. The narrator is Tish, nineteen and pregnant. Her lover Fonny is in jail, accused of rape. Flashbacks from their love affair are woven into the compelling struggle of two families to win justice for Fonny. "One of the few essential novelists of our time" New Statesman