The Price of a Child

“The Price of a Child is a book seared by a sense of mission … But there is nothing preachy about [Cary’s] narrative style. She is a powerful storyteller, frankly sensual, mortally funny, gifted with an ear for the pounce and ragged inconsequentiality of real speech and an eye for the shifts and subterfuges by which ordinary people get by. With The Price of a Child, Lorene Cary has produced a generous, sardonic, full-blooded work of fiction.” —The New York Times Book Review

“Cary’s exacting sensual description does more than lend credibility to her portrait of the age. It imparts to her writing an undercurrent of searching perception, and a fastidious element of psychological complexity.” —The Boston Globe

“A profoundly moving, evocative work that puts a fully realized human face on the issue of slavery and its consequences. Cary’s passionate, intelligent prose and her assured command of historical events as they sweep across individual lives recall Mark Twain, Charles Dickens and Thomas Hardy. The Price of a Child marks the emergence of a powerful voice in American fiction.” —The Philadelphia Inquirer

Lorene Cary is the author of the critically acclaimed novel Pride, which The New York Times Book Review described as featuring “subtle, idiosyncratic characters…whose personalities seem utterly, and affectingly, distinctive,” and praised its ability to shift “between the staccato directness of black slang and the more formal cadences of standard English.”

Her novel The Price of a Child, selected as the first city-wide One Book, One Philadelphia choice, traces one woman’s escape from slavery and illuminates Philadelphia’s Underground Railroad history. A New York Times reviewer hailed Cary as “a powerful storyteller, frankly sensual, mortally funny, gifted with an ear for the pounce of real speech,” and called the novel “a generous, sardonic, full-blooded work of fiction.”

Cary’s first book, Black Ice (1991), is a memoir of her experiences as a Black female student and later teacher at St. Paul’s, an exclusive New England boarding school. Arnold Rampersad described it as “…probably the most beautifully written and moving African-American autobiographical narrative since Maya Angelou’s celebrated I Know Why The Caged Bird Sings.” Black Ice was recognized as a Notable Book for 1992 by the American Library Association.

A graduate of St. Paul’s School (1974), Cary holds B.A. and M.A. degrees from the University of Pennsylvania (1978). She was a Thouron Fellow, studying at Sussex University in England. She has been awarded honorary doctorates from Colby College, Keene State College, and Chestnut Hill College.

In 1998, Cary founded Art Sanctuary, a non-profit lecture and performance series that brings Black thinkers and artists to Philadelphia.

Currently a lecturer in creative writing at the University of Pennsylvania, where she received the Provost’s Award for Distinguished Teaching in 1998, Cary has lectured extensively across the U.S. Her early writing career included apprenticeships at Time (1980), a position as Associate Editor at TV Guide, freelance work for publications such as Essence, American Visions, Mirabella, and The Philadelphia Inquirer Sunday Magazine, and a role as Contributing Editor for Newsweek (1993).

Cary’s numerous accolades include the Women’s Way Agent of Change Award (2002), the Advocate Community Development Corporation’s Award for Urban Excellence (2001), a Philadelphia Historical Society Founder’s Medal for History in Culture (2000), the American Red Cross Spectrum Rising Star Award for community service (1999), and a Pew Fellowship in the Arts (1995). She serves on the usage panel for The American Heritage Dictionary and the Union Benevolent Association board. Cary is a member of PEN and the Author’s Guild. She resides in Philadelphia with her husband, the Rev. Robert C. Smith, and their daughters, Laura and Zoe.

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