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9 of 9 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Three generations of rhythm, February 5, 2002
Three generations of dreamers face struggles in the rhythms of the Delta and the city. Cora.. gifted singer raised in church and encouraged to dream by her father, the preacher. She sets off to realize these dreams and is confronted with ugliness and her darkest hour. Emma.. she's labeled an outsider. Her disdain for her mother and her differences cause her to see an unusual way out of the Delta. She is confronted by her past and her true self. Parris.. the "last chance to make it right." A musical prodigy and strong woman, made so by the morals engrained in her while growing up in the Delta. She is confronted by the ghosts of her predecessors. Donna Hill has put together a fine novel, her growth as a writer apparent and almost blinding. Have you ever read a book that reached out and told you... "This is the book I've been waiting for" ...? In a nutshell, this is what Rhythms told me.
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4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Feel the Rhythms, January 13, 2002
Picture it: Rudell, Mississippi, 1927. Cora Harvey, blessed with an incredible voice, that has only been used to give praise to God, has no home and no parents after they are tragically killed. She is left with nothing but a dream. A dream to see something more in the world than the narrow, segregated confines of Rudell. Nothing that is, except a man who loves her more than life itself. A man who loves her enough to let her go to pursue her dreams of making it big in Chicago. Cora, however, is like a fish out of water on the mean streets of Chi-town. After a vicious and horrific encounter with her white employer, Cora returns to Rudell, and David, wanting to do nothing more than to put the horrible past behind her. Fate, however, decides to play a cruel trick on not only Cora, but her daughter Emma as well. Emma, who has been blessed or cursed, depending on how you choose to look at it, to look nothing like her mother or her people. Deciding to 'cross-over' Emma leaves everything she has ever known in too-small, too narrow-minded Rudell to make it in New York, hoping to never been scorned for looking 'different.' There, after meeting the man of HER dreams, she also fights to forget her painful past. That is, until it also rears its head, in the form of her daughter, whom she practically drops on her mother's doorstep. Emma's been to the other side of the mountain and is determined to stay there, even at her daughter's expense. She doesn't even stick around long enough to give her child a name. Parris, so named by her grandmother Cora, heals many wounds for Cora and David. Parris has also been blessed with her grandmother's incredible voice and restless feet, and unknowingly follows her mother's footstep by moving to New York. There she meets the man who could be her one and only, except he's got some skeltons of his own rattlin' 'round the closet. However, just when she is poised to fulfill those dreams not only for herself but also for her grandmother, events call her back home to Rudell. What she learns there could change her life forever. Donna Hill has written a wonderful book with richly drawn characters. Her descriptions of Rudell will have you almost tasting the dust in the air, swatting the gnats away from your face and smelling some of that great down home cooking! It will make you smile and wish for a small community that knows everybody (and their business) but when needed, they are there for one another. I enjoyed this book from cover to cover, and would highly recommend it to anyone looking for a book that shows strength, wisdom and courage!
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4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
What a rhythmic journey, November 20, 2001
Cora Harvey is one of those women. I found myself wanting to slap some sense into her `country bumpkin behind' for many a thing - how she treated her daughter, lied to her husband and kept so harsh secrets. Rhythms is a skillfully written sonata of three women - Cora, her biracial daughter, Emma, and granddaughter, Parris by romance diva Donna Hill. Hill writes of these women's troubled lives and dark secrets: secrets common to most of our Southern heritages. It made me wonder just how many women are living the Imitation of Life lie. (If you haven't seen that movie, you need to. It is a classic!) Emma is the incarnation of Sarah Jane in Imitation of Life. Sarah Jane is so light she can "pass for white" and that's the life she chooses despite warnings from her mother and getting beat up by her "white boyfriend." The difference between Sarah Jane and Emma is that Emma's father really is white; Sarah Jane's father was a fair-skinned Black man. Emma was Cora's heartache; reminder of her damaged person and unfulfilled life. She'd gone to Chicago to make it big singing. What she found was fun and frivolity, number running and gangsters. Cora hangs her head and goes back to Rudell, Mississippi pregnant by the one man she'd grown to respect and whom she thought respected her. Emma's childhood isn't a pleasant one because of the shame Cora must endure after her birth. Emma discovers a key to some unanswered questions when she intercepts a letter from the woman Cora lived with in Chicago. Emma sets out to right the wrong she'd faced all her life - having her mother look at her with emptiness. After the confrontation, Emma chooses to live life as a white woman and seeks healing in the arms of her Italian husband. Then came along her "little brown baby girl" and more lies. Parris's arrival helps Cora regain the strength and fire she exhibits early in the book. She devotes her life to the child and is able to reclaim her first love via telling him the truth about Emma. Parris, unlike her mother, is able to live a wholesome life filled with Cora's love and devotion. She goes off to college and finds work in New York; she finds a little more when she decides to work her gift - the voice she inherited from Cora in a nightclub. The rest is of the story is hair raising and tearful. Speaking of beautiful voices. There is a CD compilation that accompanies Rhythms featuring Hill's daughter. Fab-u-lous!
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