On the island of Martha's Vineyard in the 1950s  there exists a proud, insular, nearly unassailable  community known as the Oval, made up of the best  and brightest of New York's and Boston's black  bourgeoisie. Dr. Clark Coles and his wife Corinne,  pillars of this community, are mortified that  their youngest daughter Shelby is set on marrying  Meade Wyler, a white jazz musician from New York.  Equally alarmed is Lute McNeil, a successful black  furniture maker from Boston who is new to Oak  Bluffs and desperate for social acceptance. Lute has  fallen in love with Shelby Coles, or at least the  way of life she represents, and he will stop at  nothing to pull her away from Meade. As the day of  the wedding approaches, the tension surrounding  Shelby, Lute, and Meade builds, climaxing in a  single tragic act that will forever change the lives  of three American families. The  Wedding is a wise and heartfelt novel about the  shackles of race and class we all wear and the  price we pay to break them. It is also an  unforgettable history of the rise of the black middle class,  written by a woman who lived it. Wise, heartfelt, and shattering, The Wedding is Dorothy West's crowning achievement, and one of the last books edited for Doubleday by the late Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis.