Sugar: A Novel [Paperback]

Bernice L. McFadden (Author)

Book Description

Release date: January 2, 2001

"Strong and folksy storytelling...think Zora Neale Hurston...Sugar speaks of what is real." --The Dallas Morning News

From an exciting new voice in African-American contemporary fiction comes a novel Ebony praised for its "unforgettable images, unique characters, and moving story that keeps the pages turning until the end." The Chicago Defender calls Sugar "a literary explosion...McFadden reveals amazing talent." The novel opens when a young prostitute comes to Bigelow, Arkansas, to start over, far from her haunting past. Sugar moves next door to Pearl, who is still grieving for the daughter who was murdered fifteen years before. Over sweet-potato pie, an unlikely friendship begins, transforming both women's lives--and the life of an entire town.

Sugar brings a Southern African-American town vividly to life, with its flowering magnolia trees, lingering scents of jasmine and honeysuckle, and white picket fences that keep strangers out--but ignorance and superstition in. To read this novel is to take a journey through loss and suffering to a place of forgiveness, understanding, and grace.  McFadden is the author of the novels Gathering of Waters, Glorious, and This Bitter Earth. 

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

Bernice L. McFadden's first novel begins with the brief, poetic description of a crime so startling that the reader is helplessly drawn in, as if a bright red door stood ajar on a bleak and forbidding house. Pearl Taylor's daughter, Jude, has been found murdered and mutilated near a field at the edge of town. "The murder had white man written all over it," writes McFadden. "But no one would say it above a whisper. It was 1940. It was Bigelow, Arkansas. It was a black child. Need any more be said?" In the years that follow, Pearl catches sight of Jude in so many strangers that when Sugar Lacey comes to town and sets up her unwholesome "business" in the house next door, she doesn't know whether to believe what she sees in Sugar's face: a striking similarity to Jude, dead 15 years. In her sedate but supple prose--rising at times to a light, unforced lyricism in the description of landscape or character--the author perfectly renders the closed and protective society of a small Southern town, the superstitions, gossip, and prying. Although the men of Bigelow are happy enough to have Sugar around, the women do their best to drive her off. Only Pearl is drawn to Sugar, managing to look beyond the rumors surrounding her new neighbor, whose dismal life, she tells Pearl, "had no crossroads." Eventually Pearl shows Sugar the ballerina-topped jewelry box in which she keeps snapshots of her dead daughter.

Sugar lifted the lid and saw herself staring back at her. She jerked as if struck. Her hands were shaking as she lifted the first of many pictures from the box. Jude rolling in the grass, Jude swimming in the lake, Jude sleeping, Jude laughing. Sugar's head was swimming. If someone had brought these pictures to her and said, 'Here you are in the life you can't recall,' she would have believed every word of it and ignored the slight differences that remained between Jude and herself. Jude's smaller nose and thinner lips, her rounder eyes and fuller brow. But the smile was the same; sure and solid. Sugar knew that smile, it was her own.

Slowly, the secret connections between Jude and Sugar unfold against a backdrop of suspense and the return of violence. This is an ambitious and feeling debut from a promising writer. --Regina Marler --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

From Publishers Weekly

With her eponymous anti-heroine, debut novelist McFadden breaks the mold of a venerable stereotype. Here, the hooker with a heart of gold is instead a hooker with a past so tarnished no amount of polishing can change her fate. As a baby, Sugar is abandoned by her mother and raised by a trio of prostitutes who run an Arkansas bordello. Turning tricks at age 12, and leaving town four years later to try her luck in St. Louis and then Detroit, brings more degradation, along with an ever-hardening heart. Upon her mother's death in 1955, Sugar is willed a modest home in Bigelow, Ark., but when she moves into town, and supports herself the only way she knows, the female population rises in wrath against her. All except Pearl, Sugar's next-door neighbor, who more than a decade ago lost her beloved daughter, Jude, to a vicious rapist/murderer. Pearl is struck by Sugar's uncanny likeness to Jude, and is determined to become Sugar's friend in spite of vocal disapproval. Although the two women are opposites in nearly every way, they bring out the best in each other: Sugar convinces Pearl to loosen up and accompany her to a Saturday night juke joint, and Sugar promises to go to church for two months of Sundays. Hypocritical gossip spreads among the townsfolk and tension grows when it turns out that nearly every married man in Bigelow pays a visit to Sugar, leaving the apparently frigid wives planning to run Sugar out of town. Pearl gives it her best shot to transform Sugar, but both women's painful pasts come back to haunt them in a crescendo of violent reenactments, betrayals and surprising revelations leading to a poignant, bittersweet ending. While hampered by a forced and compressed backstory, a surfeit of maudlin moments and some overwriting that is inadvertently funny, this ambitious first novel will appeal to readers who can appreciate Sugar's determination to come to terms with her past and fashion a viable future. Agent, James Vines. (Feb.)
Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 240 pages
• Publisher: Plume (January 2, 2001)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0452282209
• ISBN-13: 978-0452282209
• Product Dimensions: 5.2 x 0.6 x 8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 8 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.6 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (227 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #217,979 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

I am mother, daughter, sister and friend. All I've ever wanted was to be happy. Writing makes me happy.

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

43 of 46 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars Beautifully written, stunninly haunting September 13, 2001

By Dera R Williams VINE™ VOICE

Format:Hardcover

In the writing workshop I recently attended and in the book on writing I am now reading, I am constantly being reminded to hook the reader with that first sentence and paragraph. "Jude was dead" grabbed me from the beginning and had ahold of me until the last page was turned. This hauntingly beautiful tale of a "scarlet" woman and the small town without pity was an exercise in human nature. Sugar comes to Bigelow, a small African American town in Arkansas, in 1955 to live in a house next door to Pearl and Joe. Fifteen years earlier their daughter Jude was brutally murdered. There is something about Sugar that reminds Pearl of her beloved daughter and while the whole town shuns her, she befriends her. Sugar brings out the youth and makes Pearl laugh and enjoy life. Pearl has not laughed so much since before Jude died. Pearl, the virtuous wife and mother, pillar of the church has even taken to dying her hair and visiting the juke joints with Pearl and taken Joe with her. The town is horrified at Pearl taking up with Sugar and their back- biting curiosity turns to venom.
Sugar, abandoned, as a child and growing up around brothels just does what she know best, make men happy. She knows secrets about Bigelow that no one else knows. Sugar has never known love and when she meets Pearl's son she finds out what it is, alas, she is unable to accept it. A tragedy unfolds with devastating consequences that reveal the events of fifteen years prior.
This book is written in rich detail, realistic characterization and superb writing. This writer's ability to capture the look and feel of the 50s Jim Crow south and the people who inhabit this small town are amazing and there is no doubt this is a literary masterpiece. I'm told there will be a sequel; I can hardly wait.

41 of 46 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars Hey! I want more stars - cause this is a " 10 " August 9, 2000

By Sischelle

Format:Hardcover

Listen, why are you still reading reviews...you should be ordering this book by now. If anyone has anything negative to say about this book....then they don't know a good read when they see one! LOL

Sugar is [ as they say these days ] off da' hook! There is no doubt that Bernice McFadden has written herself into the creme de la creme of authorship - ok I made the word up. ;-)

Sugar is about two friends that are soooo different, and from totally different backgrounds. Sugar is Ms. Thang and every man wants to "be with her!" Sugar raised to survive using what my moma called "her sweet lucy." There's Pearl who is totally opposite from her new found best friend; she was raised to be the perfect mother, wife, church lady, and model citizen.

The relationship that Ms. McFadden develops between them is soooo touching and dear. You are sure to get caught up in the lives of Pearl, Sugar and the whole town of Bigelow.

Hey, Get This One! Ms. McFadden you've got another Fan....can't wait for the new one to come!

Sugar is Sweet with a tinch of sour!

17 of 19 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars ANOTHER MUST READ NOVEL! January 11, 2000

By SHUNDA L. BLOCKER

Format:Hardcover

I finished SUGAR last night and wanted to share this with other readers. I literally carried this book around with me until I finished it last night. I read it under the dryer at the salon, in my car in Atlanta, GA traffic jams, at home in the bed...it was just that good. It's a wonderful story on how people go through unpleasant situations but they still survive. SUGAR and PEARL make you think of old and new friends. It's a MUST read, especially by other book club members! I assure you, you will not be disappointed. If you read and liked "Miss Ophelia" by Mary Burnett Smith then you will surely go out and buy this book today! Hurry up it's in local bookstores all over America, it hit the stands a few days ago!