In “Be White With Me”, R.E. Hayes examines Chicago’s racial landscapes through one family’s unravelling. When corporate attorney Linnea Dunlap’s father Eddie, gripped by advancing dementia, shoots a neighbor’s dog, the Dunlap family’s lives splinter in unexpected directions. What begins as a neighbourhood dispute ignites deeper questions about justice, identity and the burden of history in America’s most segregated city.
In this debut novel, R.E. Hayes maps Chicago’s social and cultural terrain with surgical precision. His South Side pulses with telling details. Yet the novel’s core strength lies in its unflinching portrayal of Eddie’s mental decline. Hayes traces this dissolution through three distinct lenses: Rowena watches her proud husband transform into a stranger who sometimes spits vicious words at her; Terry, their son, finds his own alienation as a Muslim convert deepening as his father slips away; and Linnea discovers her professional success offers no protection against family tragedy. Through their intersecting perspectives, Hayes explores how mental illness can reshape not just one mind but an entire family system.
The story gains more depth through Linnea’s relationship with Andrew Barry, a Black police lieutenant. Their courtship becomes a lens for examining questions of authenticity and belonging that transcend simple romance. Both must confront buried assumptions about class, power and what it means to “make it” while maintaining connections to community. Hayes handles their evolving relationship with commendable nuance, avoiding both excessive sentiment and cynicism.
Drawing on his background, Hayes renders American legal systems and procedures with documentary precision. Yet technical details never overshadow human drama. Even peripheral characters emerge fully formed – a nervous store owner contemplating a lawsuit, a young mother processing her ex’s violent death, a defense attorney negotiating the space between justice and mercy. While juggling multiple narrative threads occasionally strains the book’s architecture, this reflects the messy reality Hayes depicts. Through Linnea’s corporate workplace, Terry’s religious conversion, and Eddie’s encounters with law enforcement, the novel examines how race and class shape modern Chicago.
Hayes particularly excels at depicting the subtle violence of institutional racism – the small humiliations, the constant calculations, the code-switching required to navigate different social spaces. Yet he also captures moments of genuine connection across divides of race, class and generation. His characters find ways to reach each other, however imperfectly. The writing itself shifts seamlessly between legal precision and lyrical insight, matching its style to the demands of each scene. Clearly a versatile writer, Hayes can render a courtroom confrontation with procedural exactness, then pivot to capture the texture of a family dinner or a tense discussion between parent and child.
“Be White With Me” marks Hayes as a writer of serious ambition and ability. He’s created a work that rejects easy answers while insisting on the possibility of understanding across the fractures that define American life. This debut novel achieves what the best fiction does – it makes us see familiar realities with new clarity while compelling us to question our own position within these systems. The result is both a vital Chicago novel and a significant contribution to contemporary literature about race, family, and identity in America.
You can purchase “Be White With Me” by R. E. Hayes here!
