Chasing the 400

Sheilah Vance
XLibris (2005)
ISBN 141349174X
Reviewed by Mary Simmons for Reader Views (10/06)

Vera Marshall is the type of woman who doesn’t take any crap from anyone.  She has her goals and plans for her life and she will do anything to make them happen. Strong, gutsy and sexy, Vera knows what she wants and she knows how to get it.  Her brother, Bobby, is just as ambitious in his own way, but he is quicker to admit defeat and turn his goals in another direction.

Both Vera and Bobby have big dreams, but they recognize the social barriers keeping them from easy access to their goals. While Bobby works hard trying to make his own way in the world and create his own success for the betterment of himself and his family, Vera thinks only of herself and what others can do for her.

These are two of the characters you will meet when you pick up “Chasing the 400,” the debut novel of Sheilah Vance, a Pennsylvania writer who sets her first work of fiction in the Main Line and Philadelphia area where she has lived most of her life.  Vance takes us back in time to the working class colored section in the Main Line community of Ardmore where the Marshalls live, work and play. The story commences in 1955 as Vera is set to graduate from Ardmore High School and draws a picture of what it must have been like in the region during the early years of the civil rights movement.

Although racial barriers are being broken down and the Marshalls attend an integrated high school, segregation is still a very real part of their lives. The streets in their communities are drawn along racial lines, white and black students do not interact with each other in the halls of their schools and department stores cater exclusively to preferred clientele.  Within the black community, class distinctions are drawn. Vera, who is the daughter of a plumber, dreams of becoming a member of the 400, “an exclusive, informal collection of Philadelphia’s black bourgeoisie, the talented tenth, the doctors, lawyers and other successful colored businessmen and their wives…they had to work twice as hard as whites to be considered half as good, and the 400 wanted to be considered not just good, but a credit to their race.”

“Chasing the 400” is an interesting glimpse into a period of American history that cannot be ignored. It examines the motivations, struggles and successes of the people who lived and dreamed during the fight for racial equality. You will find yourself rooting for Vera and applauding her courage and confidence while wincing sometimes at her methods and attitude. She is a saucy character who makes the reading of this fascinating novel that much more enjoyable.

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