About the Author

CONNIE BRISCOE
is the New York Times bestselling author of Big Girls Don't Cry.

Reviews

"A big, dishy page-turner that will intrigue, amuse, and captivate" - E. Lynn Harris"

"A Peyton Place for the 21st-century," trumpets the publicity except, of course, the protagonists in Briscoe's latest are mostly African American. Here, the author of Sisters and Lovers limns the complex relations among several women in a wealthy enclave in Prince George's County, MD. Copyright 2002 Cahners Business Information.

Adult/High School-Prince George's County, MD, adjacent to the nation's capital and one of America's most affluent majority African-American counties, is the backdrop to this novel. The main characters live in the exclusive, gated Silver Lake community. They include Barbara, the long-suffering wife of a womanizing self-made millionaire; Jolene, a sexy, materialistic government executive who seeks to replace her husband with a wealthier, more ambitious man; and Candice, a white, aging hippie whose daughter, Ashley, is dating Kenyatta, a young black man. Candice opposes her daughter's dating outside of her race, and Kenyatta's mother, a hardworking divorce whose husband had abandoned them to marry a white woman, is equally against her son's choice. Lee is an abused, runaway teen whose life collides violently with the opulent world of Silver Lake in her desperate search for her father, whom she has never met. One subplot gives an unexpected 21st-century spin on the "tragic mulatto" literary theme of the early 20th century. Teens who have read James Weldon Johnson's The Autobiography of an Ex-Colored Man (Vintage, 1989) or Charles Chestnutt's "The Wife of His Youth" might find it interesting to compare the significance of racial identification explored in those works to its importance here. Fans of Terry McMillan and E. Lynn Harris will also enjoy this novel.-Joyce Fay Fletcher, Rippon Middle School, Prince William County, VA Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information.

"A big, dishy page-turner that will intrigue, amuse, and captivate" - E. Lynn Harris"