"My brethren, count it all joy when you fall into various trials, knowing that the testing of your faith produces patience." (James 1:2-3)
Josephine "Cherie" Petion, a Jamaican born, practical orphan of mixed heritage befriends her older cousin-in-law, Quentin "Peach" Rice, who is a reckless Southern teenager who comes to live with their aunt and uncle in an upper middle class neighborhood in Detroit. They take on self-absorbed relatives, diabetes, delinquency, racial tension at school, the simple joys of living and the heartache of disappointment. He teaches her how to trust herself and have fun. She, in turn, teaches him how to care. Leon and Rosemary Petion, a remarkable couple, creates an eye in the middle of the storm where their niece and nephew can finally be children. And although they will not fully understand until years later, God teaches them to rejoice no matter what the circumstance.
It is soon evident that ghosts from pasts they didn't create haunt both Josephine’s and Quentin’s young lives. Therefore, older relatives "drop by" during the course of the story to offer insight into their families’ history.
For instance, after all of Quentin's older brothers and sisters die in two unrelated but equally tragic accidents, it devastates their father (Byron Rice) enough to confess to Quentin the truth about his parentage. Later, Quentin's mother (Grace Hamilton) and birth father (Aaron Mathis) recount their decades-long love affair and try to vindicate themselves by placing all blame on Byron. Quentin's love for Byron, contempt for Aaron, and disgust at Grace's behavior influences much of his behavior.
Josephine’s family history is almost panoramic in its sweep. Many years before the turmoil of the Vietnam War, a wealthy French heir (Alain Rancier) made a young Vietnamese widow his bride and her little girl (Vivien Rancier) his adopted daughter. Vivien grew up in France, knowing nothing about the suffering in her homeland, never learning even how to speak her mother's native tongue.
During the height of the reign of "Papa Doc" Duvalier in Haiti, a plot to overthrow the dictatorship is revealed, and one of the richest elite families in the country is forced into exile after its head is killed. The mother (Simone Batis Petion) finds a niche in Jamaica, the older son (Leon Petion) carves out a life for himself in America, the daughter (Aimee Petion) yearns for the country they will never see again, and the younger son (Dominic Petion) searches.
Years later, the search ends as Dominic, now a young man, meets Vivien, now a young woman. Their sweet, tremulous love is shaken when she is disowned by her adopted French family. It is shattered when she dies shortly after childbirth.
And Josephine, their daughter, is soon left to the whims of Dominic's proud, superstitious grandmother Simone (whom she calls "Nonie") and psychotic aunt Aimee (also known as "Tante" in the story). Wise beyond her years, rejected and hurt more than any little girl should have to be, she constructs a shell around herself. She decides to be "perfect"… that way, she won’t be a burden on anyone.
The connection between Josephine and Quentin occurs years before either of their birth, when Grace's sister Rosemary meets and marries Dominic's brother Leon. Rosemary, childless by will of God but motherly by nature, brings Josephine into her home as a quiet eight year old. She finds out that she is smart, has a beautiful voice, and doesn't mind doing chores. Both she and her husband knew and loved Josephine's parents, saw them in her, and knew what kind of young woman she would be. They saw the chrysalis, and awaited the butterfly.
The narration begins in late August 1985, in medias res, as an almost sixteen year old Quentin leaves Atlanta to live with Rosemary after a string of incidents (rumors of his participation in a murder, an affair with an older woman, "entertaining" a young woman in his parents' bed) drive recently widowed Grace and her new husband Aaron up the wall. He soon finds his way around Rosemary's restrictions, but does give her respect. He befriends the neighbors' unassuming son Angelo Dawson, and makes a name in the private school that Leon and Rosemary force him to go to by "stomping" a bully. After the first few chapters, he emerges as unreasonable, hopelessly opinionated, yet compelling.
Josephine, not quite thirteen and more introspective, isn't quite sure how to take her cousin-in-law at first. Blazing into the Petions' quiet lives like a spectacular, destructive comet, she resents his intrusion at first. But after one of his midnight exploits, he needs her help and she gives it. That night begins the slow development of a friendship. Josephine's maturity is contrasted with the antics of her best friend, Nicole "Nikki" Ferguson. A New Age-crazed eighth grader, Nikki is hopelessly silly and naive.
After the first four teen-narrated chapters open the book, Leon and Rosemary talk of the circumstances surrounding their niece and nephew's births, inside two different frames (Leon's justification of his unease around children, and Rosemary's tale spinning at a church function).
Aimee, Josephine's aunt, calls and ends up in a reverie that leaves the main setting of the story to recount the events surrounding the Petion exile. Quentin then picks up the thread of narration, recounting his sixteenth birthday, and allowing a glimpse behind his "front" for the first time. Grace breezes into town just in time to give her side of her sister's story. Then Josephine closes 1985 with the holiday season and her thirteenth birthday, giving insight into what she values, her love of music, and her refreshing innocence.
Aaron drops in with a phone call to Quentin in January 1986, and ends up being dismissed by his son yet again. He thinks back to the black college scene in the mid-fifties, when the seed of his love affair with Grace was planted. Nikki brings the tale back to the eighties with a refreshing springtime episode that brings Josephine U.S. citizenship and a gift from the mother she never knew she missed so much.
Angelo ends the school year by introducing Quiana Minter, an ambitious, friendly new girl who hails from California, and who likes Angelo's sincerity. Unfortunately, ladies' man Quentin is strongly drawn to her also. Fortunately, Quiana does not reciprocate the feeling, and Quentin and Angelo are "cool" once more.
An interlude of sorts occurs as Quentin, Josephine, Rosemary, and Leon recount their summer jaunt through the South. Then it is the fall of 1986. Quentin is a senior, Josephine is a freshman, and they are caught in the midst of a series of race-charged events at their high school. During a casual conversation, Quentin gives Angelo's girlfriend Quiana the idea of founding a coalition to look after the interests of minority students. Between Quentin's charisma and Quiana's knack for details, they succeed in creating the Black Awareness Congress. When the next racist incident occurs, the BAC is prepared to take on the administration and the majority of students alike.
Behind the scenes of the BAC, Quentin and Quiana are learning to like one another in spite of their differences... a little too much. Angelo, never interested in causing a lot of fuss, doesn't become involved with the BAC very much. And Josephine, along with ever-present Nicole, are growing up.
The events climax when Josephine stumbles upon a pair of would-be student saboteurs and they bury her in the snow, setting off a chain reaction of health problems that end up triggering type I diabetes. Worried about his younger "cousin", Quentin recounts his earlier feelings of rage towards his birth father's usurping and the callous indifference of his brothers' and sisters' murderer... causing him to go against everything that Byron Rice taught. He then plans to act on his anger towards Josephine's attackers. But her common sense stops a horrible thing from occurring.
Aimee is contacted by Leon, who has questions about Cherie's medical history. She takes us back to the summer of 1972 and characterizes charming Vivien, who she hates. She compares Cherie as a young child to her mother, and explains why she wanted to break her spirit. She then reveals a shocking secret, and her place as one of the trilogy's most horrendous characters is confirmed.
The narration returns to the present, with Quiana's discovery that she is pregnant... and that Quentin is the father. He reacts typically at first, but a few talking-tos and a good thrashing makes him relent and face up to the responsibility. Quiana's parents kick her out, and she moves in with the Petions and Quentin.
The BAC is shaken from the ground up. Angelo is too, but rises above the wrong to help when he is needed. By graduation, the baby (Malcolm "Mack" Rice) is born, the BAC is intact, and the eventful 1986-1987 school year at the elite private school is history.
Once the baby is born, Quiana rejects him, often leaving little Malcolm for Josephine and friends to watch. Quentin, maturing a notch or two, embarrasses some sense back into his blossoming younger cousin when she decides to break out of her "goody two shoes" mold and sneak out with Nicole to a nightclub. Running into problems in his relationship with Quiana, overwhelmed with responsibility, Quentin is drowning in trouble until Quiana leaves without notice.
Then he sees a way out. Knowing that his son will be in good hands with Rosemary and Josephine, he enlists in the Marines, and breezes out of Detroit as dramatically as he came.
Count It All Joy, with its theme of joy, is intended to be the first book in a trilogy aimed at singles, African-Americans, and young adults 16-35.
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