With passion, brutal honesty and lyricism, Wideman spins the story of an African-American writer, Cudjoe, who returns to his native West Philadelphia to write a book on the 1985 police bombing of a rowhouse inhabited by members of a black organization. The blast killed six adults and five children and more than 60 other houses were destroyed by the flames, but Cudjoe searches for the one mysterious survivor, a young boy known as Simba Muntu.  (USE102, $13.00)