From Publishers Weekly
Past is prologue-literally-for a young African-American woman making a fresh start in Cleage's (What Looks Like Crazy on an Ordinary Day...) highly readable third novel. Just out of rehab and nearly bankrupt, 34-year-old Regina Burns receives a much-needed job offer from motivational speaker Beth Davis, a former employer. At 24, Regina went to work for Beth as a speechwriter and special assistant, helping Beth bring her message of empowerment to a growing national audience. The two women were accompanied by Beth's 20-something only child, known to all as Son. Regina fell in love with Son, but agreed to hide the romance from disapproving Beth. When they were discovered, Son broke up with Regina rather than upset his mother, driving Regina back home to D.C. and into a cocaine habit. Just as she is on the verge of losing everything, word of Son's death in New York on September 11 shocks Regina into rehab. When Beth decides to donate Son's papers to his alma mater, Morehouse College, she hires Regina to coordinate the project. Upon arriving in Atlanta, Regina runs into charismatic Blue Hamilton, an ex-singer who becomes her landlord. Blue wields an odd power over a peaceful city enclave bordered by threatening neighborhoods-and over Regina as well. As she works quickly to organize Son's papers, Regina must decide what to do with growing evidence of a secret life he kept hidden from Beth. At the same time Regina fears for Blue's safety when neighborhood tensions begin to escalate. The novel takes a creative path to a predictable ending, neatly resolving several plot lines. Regina is a delightful narrator: frank, self-aware and keenly observant. Cleage stumbles with the story's brief detour into the supernatural, but this distracting misstep only slightly diminishes the story's appeal.
Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information, Inc.
Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information, Inc.
From Booklist
Regina Burns, recovering from cocaine addiction and on the verge of losing her family home, reluctantly takes a temporary assignment in Atlanta. Her job: to oversee a memorial to Son Davis, the man she would have married if she could have wrested him from the grip of an overprotective mother, Regina's former and now current employer. Can she put herself back in the powerful orbit of Beth Davis? Can she help deify the image of her former fiance, even knowing his frailties? Her aunt Abbie, bolstered by a vision she's had, assures Regina that she will more than succeed in her assignment. In fact, according to Aunt Abbie, Regina will meet her soulmate (a black man with blue eyes, whom she loved in a previous life), rescue a damsel in distress, and slay a dragon. With that tall order, Regina sets off for Atlanta and meets a blue-eyed former singer who has managed to create a utopia in a troubled urban neighborhood, a place with no crime, strong men, creative women, and blooming gardens. Cleage combines her usual strong social consciousness, delicious character development, and evocative portrayal of black neighborhoods in a novel about love across the ages and foibles of public figures. Vanessa Bush
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved
