A Truly Fantastic Listening Experience
by Denene Milner, Angela Burt-Murray and Mitzi Miller
When three best friends come together for their sorority sister's tony wedding on New Year's Eve, they make a vow at the stroke of midnight to get married within one year. As the three women embark on their search to find their soul mates, they navigate the full-contact sport known as being a SSBFDLA (successful, single, black, female dating in L.A.) and negotiate the shark-infested waters of making a name for themselves in Hollywood Can Trista, the hyper-driven celebrity agent, find the time to schedule a meaningful romance? Will Amaya, the sexy starlet, convince the married hip hop-label exec she has been seeing to leave his wife and slip a ring on her finger or will the NBA star steal her heart in the final seconds? After undergoing a complete makeover, will Vivian, the jaded gossip columnist, win back the father of her child?
Set against the seductive backdrop of money, power, and sex, The Vow follows these women as they discover that their desire to find a husband isn't as important as finding themselves.
FROM THE CRITICS
(online review)
This is truly one of my favorite books. Diane Mckinney-Whetstone has a knack of writing that taps into all of you five senses. This book is truly a great read. In Blues Dancing, Diane McKinney-Whetstone offers a work that fuses past and present, character and place with a transfixing lyricism that shimmers in its detail. This richly spun story of love, passion, betrayal, and redemption shifts seamlessly between modern-day and 70's Philadelphia when Verdi, the pampered daughter of a prosperous southern preacher, enrolls at the local university. Immediately drawn to Johnson, a fellow student whose city-smart ways are as intriguing as they are shocking, Verdi spirals into an unfamiliar world of erotic love, militant politics, and heroin. Enter Rowe, the conservative professor who rescues Verdi from her addiction even as he falls hopelessly in love with her himself
Catherine Sanderson and her daughter Phoebe, have always been close, except for one secret between them: the idenity of Phoebe's father. Catherine, occupied with helping Atlanta's immigrants, doesn't have time for questions of paternity. But when Phoebe's father, B.J., a renowned reporter, shows up to investigate a refugee prostitution ring, Catherine must finally confront the only man she's ever loved and the truth she's witheld for eighteen years. By turns warm and funny, serious and raw, Cleage's ability to create a gripping story about strong, spirited women remains unrivaled.
(taken from book excerpt)
Living on a peach farm in South Carolina with her harsh, unyielding father, Lily Owens has shaped her entire life around one devastating, blurred memory--the afternoon her mother was killed, when Lily was four. Since then, her only real companion has been the fierce-hearted, and sometimes just fierce, black woman Rosaleen, who acts as her �stand-in mother.� When Rosaleen insults three of the deepest racists in town, Lily knows it's time to spring them both free. They take off in the only direction Lily can think of, toward a town called Tiburon, South Carolina--a name she found on the back of a picture amid the few possessions left by her mother.
There they are taken in by an eccentric trio of black beekeeping sisters named May, June, and August. Lily thinks of them as the calendar sisters and enters their mesmerizing secret world of bees and honey, and of the Black Madonna who presides over this household of strong, wise women. Maternal loss and betrayal, guilt and forgiveness entwine in a story that leads Lily to the single thing her heart longs for most.