Linden Hills

Linden Hills is a novel by the American writer Gloria Naylor, published in 1985 and set in a prosperous black suburb.

The book opens with the history of Luther Nedeed, the man who bought the land and turned it into the most desirable address available to black families in the city, and it is clear from the start that living there has a price. Lester and Willie, two young men who need money over the Christmas holiday, take work in the neighbourhood, and Willie becomes involved with the Nedeed family while Lester tries to understand what he is looking at. Naylor builds the novel around a descent: each street and household corresponds to a level of the neighbourhood's compromise, and the further in the characters go, the clearer it becomes that the success everyone is chasing has been paid for by somebody else.

It was the author's second novel, and it was written as a version of Dante's journey through the circles of hell, set in an American suburb where the punishment is made to fit the achievement.