Amazon.com Review
Miss Cozy Brown, proprietor of a bookstore that specializes in rare and hard-to-find African American titles, goes to sleep one night knowing that something magical is about to happen. She finds herself drawn again to the yellowed manuscript that her grandmother bequeathed to her,
Children of Grace, a slave narrative by a woman healer who died long before abolition. Despite its unsparing accounts of cruelty and abuse, hope shimmers from its pages, and the book can only be described as a love story with prophetic overtones, much like
Redemption Song. It closes with the promise that slavery will end--the author of the manuscript, Iona, reads the future in the stars--but that true freedom will only come later. The next morning, as Miss Cozy suspected, two strangers are waiting for Black Images to open. They both need a special book, something life-transforming, and their hands fall at the same time on
Children of Grace. Miss Cozy glances up as the couple approaches the counter. She "watched these two, as she'd watched so many others. She knew that they had no idea how their lives were going to be affected. Other folks had come to her shop thinking that they had been led to the bookstore because of their own intuition. But she knew better. This was her purpose, her calling: to help others unfold the chapters of their lives by reading between someone else's lines."
Some of what happens to Fina and Ross when Miss Cozy takes them under her wing will not surprise readers. But as they leaf through Children of Grace together, drawing strength from the story, they uncover Iona's "Recipe of Life," with its powerful and remarkably personal message. In her fictional debut, Bertice Berry has written a modern-day fairy tale and a hymn of praise to literature's redemptive power. --Regina Marler
--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
From Publishers Weekly
Comedian and inspirational speaker Berry (Sckraight from the Ghetto) makes a tear-tugging fiction debut with this slim romantic fable about connections across generations. Neighbors Josephine "Fina" Chambers and Ross Buchanan meet serendipitously when they reach simultaneously for the only known copy of a slave woman's journal at a celebrated bookstore devoted to works by black authors. Proprietor Cosina Brown, Miss Cozy to her friends, refuses to sell the valuable book to either customer, but she suspects each has a legitimate reason for wanting it, and convinces the two of them to read it aloud to each other at her shop. The story may hold keys to issues in each of their lives: Fina has buried herself in work since her father's death two years earlier, and is unable to sustain a relationship. Ross, an anthropologist specializing in urban myths, wants to prove the narrative is more than a legend and come to terms with his troubled past by unearthing a tale of enduring love. As Fina and Ross read the diary, with Miss Cozy hovering nearby, the saga of slaves Iona and Joe, separated by circumstances, unites the trio. Written by Iona, who was granted the gift of spontaneous literacy, the diary tells of familiar indignities and injustices of slavery. It concludes with the account of a tragedy, but Miss Cozy's psychic insight leads her to believe that the end of the diary is not the end of the story. Her powers of perception bring the trio to a spiritual affirmation of love and what Miss Cozy calls a Recipe for Life. Berry's premise is interesting, but the rapid intimacy between Fina and Ross strains credulity, as do the frequent coincidences that advance the plot. Readers of inspirational fiction may enjoy this combination of sentimental love story and black history, however. Agent, Victoria Sanders. (Feb.)
Copyright 2000 Reed Business Information, Inc.
--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
