Today I am sharing my Feature Post and Book Review for RED LINE by Blake Rudman on this Black Tide Book Tour.
Below you will find a book description, my book review, an about the author section and the author’s social media links. Enjoy!
***
Book Description
Baltimore Police Detective Mitch Wilson wants a nice day out with his wife and son. Instead, they are all caught up in a catastrophic terrorist attack that has repercussions across the USA and triggers events that could alter the course of civilization.
Having lost everything, Mitch sets out to seek justice – and revenge and stumbles upon a global conspiracy.
On the other side of the world, renowned linguistic professor, Yasaman Karami, flees her native Iran for the freedom of the west; she holds one of the keys to defeating the terrorist organization.
Yasaman and Mitch’s worlds collide as, alongside federal agents and allies, they race against the clock to hunt down the terrorist masterminds and prevent worldwide catastrophe.
RED LINE by Blake Rudman is a chilling noir crime thriller based on a twisted and yet believable scheme that could change the governments and economics of the world as we know it. This thriller starts with the two disparate main characters, one in Baltimore and one in Tehran who come together to stop a worldwide catastrophe.
Baltimore Police Detective Mitch Wilson is enjoying the day by taking his wife and young son to the latest animated hit movie. He drops them off at the theater and goes to park the car when a suspicious man catches his attention. He realizes the man is headed for the theater and before Mitch can stop him, he detonates a suicide vest killing everyone. This is happening all over the U.S. where the new film is showing. Mitch is determined to exact revenge and uses information he has discovered to bribe his way onto the FBI team investigating the terror attack called the “Red Line”.
Yasaman Karami is an archeological linguist professor in Tehran, Iran. Her research has led her and her mentor to discover the origins of language. Her mentor is kidnapped for the knowledge they posses and now they are after Yasaman. She is running for her life and ends up being helped across the border and into the hands of the FBI team with Mitch when another Red Line attack hits Europe.
It is a fast paced and action filled race to discover who is responsible for the Red Line attacks and stop the global attack to come.
This is a scary and at the same time thought-provoking thriller. It has a noir feel to the writing style, two main characters that could not be more different and yet come together to make a believable team, and fast-paced action. I do wish Mitch and Yasamin had come together sooner in the story, but there was a lot to set up for the intricate plot and while there was action to keep me involved in the story until they did come together, when they did, I could not turn the pages fast enough. The idea of terrorists, who are not the type of terrorists we normally think of, and the use of super-charged subliminal messaging were just realistic enough to have me seriously cheering on the good guys. I liked the romantic elements and found they were well written for a thriller and not stereotypical.
I recommend this noir crime thriller with romantic elements for a exciting ‘save the world’ read and I will be looking forward to reading more books by this author.
***
About the Author
Blake Rudman enjoyed a former, successful career in executive management, building his own companies from the ground up.
Success or not, Blake’s heart has always been in the written word, and the myriad ideas he spent much of his spare time jotting down in notebooks, Post-Its, and scraps of paper whenever the inspiration hit him.
Now a breakout author of five noir thriller novels – all to be published in 2023 – Blake’s destiny of becoming a writer of some renown is well under way.
When he’s not working diligently on his next novel, Blake spends quality time with his family and tropical fish.
Today I am sharing my Feature Post and Book Review for DEATH IN DUTCH HARBOR by D. MacNeill Parker on this Authors Marketing Experts Blog Tour.
Below you will find an author Q&A, a book synopsis, my book review, an excerpt from the book, the author’s bio and social media links, and a Rafflecopter giveaway. Good luck on the giveaway and enjoy!
***
Author Q&A
How did you research your book?
Research was not required. Write what you know, right? As a longtime participant in the Alaska fishing industry, I couldn’t pass up the opportunity to use my experience as the backdrop to this book. What could be more intriguing than creating a world where commercial fishing and murder meet? However, I knew nothing about police dogs and so made an inquiry with the Seattle Police K9 Unit. They invited me to their training site. I was so appreciative, I named the dog in the book after the K9 Unit shepherd, CoCo.
Which was the hardest character to write?
The arch villain. It was difficult for me to navigate how to leave clues without giving away the identity of the culprit. The protagonist was a bit of a struggle, a learning experience really. Because the book is written in third person, I wrote many revisions trying out ways to best express what was inside her head.
Which was the easiest?
The police chief was the easiest character to write. I have no idea why.
Where do you get inspiration for your stories?
Aside from my own experience at sea as a fisherman that included surviving a boat that sank off the coast of Kodiak, I’ve heard many sea stories, most far more interesting than my own. There’s something about living on the edge of civilization where your life is at the mercy of Mother Nature and your survival may depend on the skill of your crew mates that is made for drama.
There are many crime mystery books out there. What makes yours different?
As a former fisherman married to a fishing boat captain, and with a career as a journalist, fisheries specialist for the State of Alaska and a seafood company executive, I’ve got the credentials to pull off authenticity. And along the way, the reader will learn a lot about Alaska and commercial fishing.
In one sentence, what was the road to publishing like?
Because I am a debut author, it was like stumbling around in a hailstorm, knocking on the doors of strangers in hopes of finding shelter.
What authors inspired you to write?
There were many authors that inspired me to write like Kurt Vonnegut, John Irving, Craig Johnson, Michael Connelly, John Grisham, Martin Cruz Smith, Raymond Chandler, Agatha Christie and Dashell Hammett but the book that lit a writing fire under me as a teenager was John Barth’s book, The Sot-Weed Factor. It’s a wild ride of historical fiction that showed me there was no limit to using your imagination when crafting a yarn.
What is something you had to cut from your book that you wish you could have kept?
There was a scene between Dr. Mo and her pal, Patsy, in a restaurant that was painful to cut. Patsy, one of my favorite characters, used salt and pepper shakers, hot sauce and catsup bottles and a fork to make a point about the doc’s messed-up personal life. It was near the end of the book where the pace had escalated. The scene slowed things down and, gulp, had to go. I hope to find a place for it in the second book!
What’s your next project?
I’m currently writing the second book of the series. So if you like the characters that inhabit DEATH IN DUTCH HARBOR, you can revisit them.
***
Book Synopsis
When two murders strain the police force of a remote Alaskan fishing port, veterinarian Maureen McMurtry is tapped by Dutch Harbor’s police chief for forensic assistance. The doctor’s got a past she’d rather not discuss, a gun in her closet, and a retired police dog that hasn’t lost her chops. All come in handy as she deciphers the cause and time of death of a local drug addict washed ashore with dead sea lions and an environmentalist found in a crab pot hauled from the sea in the net of a fishing vessel.
When her romantic relationship with a boat captain is swamped by mounting evidence that he’s the prime suspect in one of the murders, McMurtry struggles with her own doubts to prove his innocence. But can she? McMurtry’s pals, a manager of the Bering Sea crab fishery and another who tends Alaska’s most dangerous bar assist in unraveling the sinister truth.
DEATH IN DUTCH HARBOR by D. MacNeill Parker is a captivating murder mystery featuring a female veterinarian in a remote Alaskan fishing port who gets pulled into a dangerous murder investigation by the local chief of police. I was surprised when I learned this is written by a debut author because it has everything I look for in a complex crime mystery and what I would expect from much more seasoned favorite authors.
Dr. Maureen “Mo” McMurtry loves the remote Alaskan town of Dutch Harbor where she and her retired police dog, Coco live, but she is looking for more in both her personal and professional lives now that her contract has ended. When a local frug addict and two endangered sea lions are found washed ashore dead on the beach, the chief of police asks for Mo’s help with basic forensics before the bodies are sent to the State Police in Anchorage. Then a second body is found in a crab pot caught in a fishing net and brought back to port.
The investigation involves Mo in the world of Alaskan fisherman and oil companies vs. environmentalists, illegal drugs, money, and lies. Mo may be the next corpse to wash up on shore if she and her friends cannot figure out who is willing to kill to hide their secrets.
I could not put this book down! Dr. Mo is the type of realistic protagonist I love to meet in a new book. She loves a harsh environment, I would hate, but she loves it and through her eyes you see the beauty of the environment and the strength of her friends and other inhabitants. They are all independent and hard-working on land and on the sea. You can feel through the author’s vivid descriptions of landscapes and the perils of commercial fishing her love of Alaska. The mystery plot is perfectly paced with twists that kept Mo on her toes and kept me guessing.
I highly recommend this murder mystery from this debut author! I am very happy that this will be a series and I will be able to visit Dr. Mo and her friends in Dutch Harbor again.
***
Excerpt
Eric took the blanket he’d laid on the ice bench and draped it over the guy’s shoulders; just a kid, really. He folded the kid’s hands so they lay on his lap and packed ice at his sides so he would remain secure for the rough ride back to port. Reaching into the chest pocket of his own jacket, he removed a pack of cigarettes. His hand shook as he lit two.
“We smoke the same brand,” he said, bending to wedge one in Guy’s gray lips. He smoked the other cigarette, all the while talking to the kid as if his spirit lingered nearby. “What a bummer,” he said, “dying so young.” He told the kid he would be missed by someone and promised to get him home. Hearing his voice crack, Eric turned away as if he didn’t want Guy to see him that way. Then he closed the freezer door.
Guy sat in the bait locker, the cigarette still hanging from his lips. The freezing temperature caused the saltwater on his eyelashes and beard to crystallize. He looked as if he were climbing Mt. Everest instead of sitting propped-up, dead in a fishing boat bait locker headed to Dutch Harbor, Alaska.
***
Author Bio
D. MacNeill Parkerand her family are long time participants in the Alaska fishing industry. In addition to fishing for halibut, salmon, crab, and cod, she’s been a journalist, a fisheries specialist for the State of Alaska, and a seafood company executive. She’s travelled to most ports in Alaska, trekked mountains in the Chugach range, rafted the Chulitna River, worked in hunting camps, and survived a boat that went down off the coast of Kodiak. Parker’s been to Dutch Harbor many times experiencing her share of white knuckler airplane landings and beer at the Elbow Room, famed as Alaska’s most dangerous bar. While the characters in this book leapt from her imagination, they thrive in this authentic setting. She loves Alaska, the sea, a good yarn and her amazing family.
Today I am sharing my Feature Post and Book Review for THE KEEPER OF HIDDEN BOOKS by Madeline Martin on this HTP Books Blog Tour. This is a story for all who love books and believe in the ultimate power of their words and ideas.
Below you will find a book description, my book review, an about the author section and the author’s social media links. Enjoy!
***
Book Description
All her life, Zofia has found comfort in two things during times of hardship: books and her best friend, Janina. But no one could have imagined the horrors of the Nazi occupation in Warsaw. As the bombs rain down and Hitler’s forces loot and destroy the city, Zofia finds that now books are also in need of saving.
With the death count rising and persecution intensifying, Zofia jumps to action to save her friend and salvage whatever books she can from the wreckage, hiding them away, and even starting a clandestine book club. She and her dearest friend never surrender their love of reading, even when Janina is forced into the newly formed ghetto.
But the closer Warsaw creeps toward liberation, the more dangerous life becomes for the women and their families – and escape may not be possible for everyone. As the destruction rages around them, Zofia must fight to save her friend and preserve her culture and community using the only weapon they have left – literature.
THE KEEPER OF HIDDEN BOOKS by Madeline Martin is a tour de force historical fiction novel featuring a group of friends in Warsaw, Poland during WWII inspired by the true story of the public and underground libraries that continued throughout the war. This is a must read for all lovers of books who believe books have the power to uplift, nurture, embolden, and provide escape during the worst of times.
Zofia Nowak and Janina are inseparable best friends bound by the love of books. This novel follows their lives, their families’ lives, and friends during the Nazi occupation of Warsaw during WWII. It is a poignant look at the horrors perpetrated by the Nazi’s in the Warsaw Jewish ghetto and against the general Polish population in general. Hitler looked down on all Poles and wanted them eliminated or used as slave labor.
Zofia not only worked with Polish Resistance, but also worked in the library warehouse to save as many books and historical documents as possible from the Nazi book banning and burning. Janina and her family are Jewish and end up in the ghetto, but both continue to find ways to share books, remain friends and resist.
This story is beautiful and inspirational as well as so hard at times. There is a reason autocrats ban and burn books because the words and ideas are powerful. Books give hope, teach empathy, and spread ideas that can change hearts and minds. This book has an inspiring friendship at its center, mentions wonderful literary novels throughout, and reminds us to be ever vigilant of those who seek to ban and destroy books and history.
I highly recommend this marvelous historical fiction novel!
***
About the Author
Madeline Martin is a New York Times, USA Today, and internationally bestselling author of historical fiction and historical romance with books that have been translated into over twenty-five different languages.
She lives in sunny Florida with her two daughters (known collectively as the minions), two incredibly spoiled cats and a man so wonderful he’s been dubbed Mr. Awesome. She is a die-hard history lover who will happily lose herself in research any day. When she’s not writing, researching or ‘moming’, you can find her spending time with her family at Disney or sneaking a couple spoonfuls of Nutella while laughing over cat videos. She also loves research and travel, attributing her fascination with history to having spent most of her childhood as an Army brat in Germany.
“The Electra McDonnell series” by Ashley Weaver blends a mystery within a spy thriller. There are spies, murders, a tinge of romance, and some historical tidbits to entice readers.
A Peculiar Combination is the first in the Electra McDonnell series. She was raised by her Uncle Mick and has become part of the family business, pickpocketing, opening locks and safes, to steal valuables. Unfortunately for them they were set up and caught stealing. Because WWII is in full swing, an intelligence branch of the British government set them up to help in the war effort. They need Ellie to crack a safe open in a traitor’s house. The government intelligence official, Major Ramsey, gives Ellie a choice, either Ellie helps him to break into a safe and retrieve blueprints critical to the war effort before they can be delivered to a German spy, or she and her uncle go to jail. Mick and Ellie are also patriots, so it is a no brainer for her to accept the challenge. From there, it becomes very enjoyable as Major Ramsey and Ellie are constantly butting heads.
The Key to Deceit is the second book of the series. The Major once again enlists Ellie’s help in opening a locked bracelet from the arm of a dead woman found in the Thames. She is also able to provide some insight into the dead woman’s station in life from her clothing. A search reveals a camera in the bracelet, a clock key, and a bag of jewels hidden in the lining of a sable coat. Ellie and the major soon realize the dead woman was working as a spy for the Germans. Now they must uncover the German spy ring before the Nazis get their hands on important information.
Also, back in the story is Felix Lacy, a good friend of Ellie, a possible romantic interest, and someone who forges documents. He helped in the first book and now is enlisted by Ellie to help her with a crooked pawnshop owner. He is also helping her in finding the truth about her mother, convicted of killing her father, even though she proclaimed her innocence.
It becomes more apparent in this book that there is a love triangle between Felix, Ellie, and the Major. Felix wants to go beyond friends with her and become more intimate. While the Major is trying to remain professional but does have feelings for her.
Playing It Safe has just been released, the third book in the series. Ellie is given a new assignment by the Major. She is to travel under an assumed identity to the port city of Sunderland and once there await further instructions. After just arriving, she witnesses an unnatural death. A man falls dead in the street in front of her, with a mysterious message clutched in his hand. Ellie’s instincts tell her that the man’s death is connected in some way to her mission, and she goes to investigate covertly. While searching where he lives, she and the Major are united. They learn that a ring of counterfeiters is making both money and fake identity cards for German spies to operate in England. They find out that the printing plates are missing and know they must find them before the traitorous German assets. Ellie and the major are locked in a battle of wits and a race against time with an unknown and deadly adversary. They must also contend with the blitzkrieg where the Germans are unleashing bombs to try to break the British spirits.
Readers also learn more of the backstory about Ellie’s mother and whether she was innocent or guilty of murdering her father. Although Felix does not make much of an appearance the love triangle is still alive and well and he does help Ellie uncover the meaning of some written notes.
This series is very engrossing. What should upset readers is that they must wait a whole year for another installment, hopefully not the last. Readers should want a lot more books with these wonderful characters and riveting plotlines. Ideally people should read the books in order because, even though there are different riveting espionage mysteries there are overarching plotlines.
***
Author Interview
Elise Cooper: Did your professional experience help you to write?
Ashley Weaver: I have worked in libraries since the age of 14. I enjoy reading non-fiction and that is where I got the idea for the series. I think being a librarian is helpful in the sense that I have all the research information and researching strategies I need at my fingertips! I am now the Technical Services Coordinator for the Parish Libraries in Louisiana. We were the first in the US to have a library built in a book mobile for rural areas. Someone can request a book and when we are in the area, they can pick it up.
EC: How did you get the idea for the series?
AW: I was reading a lot of WWII non-fiction and read a book titled Agent Zigzag by Ben Macintyre. It is about a petty thief imprisoned on the Chanel Islands during WWII, occupied by Germany. They released him and trained his as a spy, parachuting him into England. He went to the allied authorities and said, ‘the Germans think I will spy for them do you want me to spy for you instead.’ He became a double agent. This made me think how all these criminals had skills before the war that they were able to use to help the allied cause. Each book has its own caper, where the characters must solve the espionage mystery. But there are also a few overarching plots.
EC: What about the books, 1 – 3?
AW: I enjoyed finding out how criminals can open a safe and the historical background of what those in England had to endure including the German Blitzkrieg and the major rationing. With A Peculiar Combination, book 1, I knew I wanted to make the female heroine, Ellie, a safe cracker for the espionage angle. For Playing It Safe, book 3, I read a book called The Falcon Thief about how someone smuggled and sold falcon eggs. This gave me the idea to work birding into the third book. I learned a lot about birds and decided to incorporate it into the story. I mention in the book how, during WWII, it was legal in England to shoot falcons because they were preying on the carrier pigeons, and officials worried it would interfere with messages being sent back and forth to occupied territories.
EC: How would you describe Uncle Mick?
AW: He has a flair for the exaggeration, focused, jovial, spontaneous, a little bit wily. He loves a challenge with a quick-thinking mind that can solve problems. He is the father figure to Ellie as she grew up.
EC: How would you describe Ellie?
AW: Good instincts, very intelligent, as well as street smart. She can be overconfident with a slight temper, stubborn, and independent. She likes to be in control but is adaptable.
EC: She also speaks a little about women’s rights?
AW: In book 2, The Key to Deceit, I put in this quote by her, “Contrary to what you believe it is possible for women to know about things outside of the kitchen.” She is sarcastic with the comments how the men in her life think they are strong and protective, for the helpless damsel. Yet, her uncle trained her no different than her two male cousins, who are more like brothers. During WWII a lot of women took the male jobs who were out fighting. The way she was raised has given her this inner confidence.
EC: Why the second plotline with her mother who gave birth to her in prison and then died?
AW: I wanted to have something about Ellie’s backstory. I liked the idea she has an affectionate loving family that supports her, but she does have some tragedy in her past and some questions she needs answers too.
EC: What about Major Ramsey?
AW: He is secretive, bold, stoic, determined, clever, and can be devious as well as authoritarian. He comes off as having a superior attitude. There are times he puts on a façade and comes across charming.
EC: Felix who is Ellie’s childhood friend also helps with the espionage?
AW: He is polished, likes to flirt, easy going, a teaser, and can forge documents.
EC: What about the love triangle between Felix, the Major, and Ellie?
AW: The Major comes from a privileged background while Felix and Ellie are from a different class. It is like opposites working together. She sees the Major as disconcerting and irritating.
The Major can read her mannerisms, her moods. He wants to be intimate but is trying to be professional. Because he is a military man, he does not have the same societal views as the elite class. More of a problem is that she is a rule braker and he is a rule follower, with him expecting those working for him to obey his orders and she is not one to follow orders. Her fiery personality is what attracts him to her. There is a little give and take because both are flexible when they need to be.
Regarding Felix he is very conscious of her feelings. He is very supportive of her. She sees him as a friend, but he is jealous of how the Major and she interact.
EC: Does the love triangle represent something more to Ellie?
AW: Yes. She is not just deciding between the two men, but her two different futures. With Felix she can continue her criminal enterprises, but with the Major she knows being from different worlds she would have to adapt and change a bit. She is wondering who she wants to be when the war ends.
EC: Next book?
AW: There is one more, book 4, which is the last book in my contract. I am waiting to hear back but hopefully there will be more, fingers crossed. At some point Ellie will decide between Felix and the Major. In book 4 we know who she is leaning towards. It takes place in 1941. They are back in London. Ellie knows of a robbery ring operating. Because of her family ties to the criminal world, she thinks these burglaries can be tied to espionage. She tells the Major about it. The network of criminal friends will be pulled in.
THANK YOU!!
***
BIO: Elise Cooper has written book reviews and interviewed best-selling authors since 2009. Her reviews have covered several different genres, including thrillers, mysteries, women’s fiction, romance and cozy mysteries. An avid reader, she engages authors to discuss their works, and to focus on the descriptions of their characters and the plot. While not writing reviews, Elise loves to watch baseball and visit the ocean in Southern California, with her dog and husband.
Today I am sharing my Feature Post and Book Review for WOMEN OF THE POST by Joshundra Sanders on this HTP Books Summer 2023 Blog Tour.
Below you will find a book description, my book review, an excerpt from the book, an about the author section, and the author’s social media links. Enjoy!
***
Book Description
For fans of A League of Their Own, a debut historical novel that gives voice to the pioneering Black women of the of the Six Triple Eight Battalion who made history by sorting over one million pieces of mail overseas for the US Army.
Inspired by true events, Women of the Post brings to life the heroines who proudly served in the all-Black battalion of the Women’s Army Corps in WWII, finding purpose in their mission and lifelong friendship.
1944, New York City. Judy Washington is tired of having to work at the Bronx Slave Market, cleaning white women’s houses for next to nothing. She dreams of a bigger life, but with her husband fighting overseas, it’s up to her and her mother to earn enough for food and rent. When she’s recruited to join the Women’s Army Corps—offering a steady paycheck and the chance to see the world—Judy jumps at the opportunity.
During training, Judy becomes fast friends with the other women in her unit—Stacy, Bernadette and Mary Alyce—who all come from different cities and circumstances. Under Second Officer Charity Adams’s leadership, they receive orders to sort over one million pieces of mail in England, becoming the only unit of Black women to serve overseas during WWII.
The women work diligently, knowing that they’re reuniting soldiers with their loved ones through their letters. However, their work becomes personal when Mary Alyce discovers a backlogged letter addressed to Judy. Told through the alternating perspectives of Judy, Charity and Mary Alyce, Women of the Post is an unforgettable story of perseverance, female friendship and self-discovery.
WOMEN OF THE POST by Joshunda Sanders is an emotionally charged historical fiction based on the true story of the WAC 6888th Central Postal Battalion during WWII. This was the first all-Black, all female Army battalion formed and sent overseas to England to expedite the backlog of wartime mail delivery to the troops.
This novel features several black women’s lives beginning in 1944, but the main protagonist is Judy Washington. She lives with her mother in the Bronx and seeks daily work on the Bronx Slave Market cleaning houses for white women for barely any money. One day Judy is approached by an impressive Black woman in uniform and informed about the Army WAC program. She joins not only to send real money home to her mother, but also to hopefully discover what happened to her husband who went to war, but she has not heard from in several months.
The story follows Judy into the Army and introduces her to lifelong friends as they all are on the path of self-discovery. Besides Judy, you are introduced to Stacy, who is big and built strong who works the family farm in Missouri, Bernadette, who works with her mother in a beauty salon in Chicago, and Mary Alyce who discovers her father was a black man after joining the Army and being raised white. There is also a sub-plot intertwined throughout about the two commanding officers of the Battalion and their love for each other.
There is so much beauty and dignity in the portrayal of these women as they face prejudice and discrimination, not only in the South, but everywhere. I read so much about WWII and yet I had never heard of these women and their service. I am so glad I know about them now.
This is a captivating and memorable historical fiction novel that I highly recommend!
***
Excerpt
One
Judy
From Judy to The Crisis
Thursday, 14 April 1944
Dear Ms. Ella Baker and Marvel Cooke,
My name is Judy Washington, and I am one of the women you write about in your work on the Bronx Slave Market over on Simpson Street. My husband, Herbert, is serving in the war, so busy it has been months since I heard word from him. It is the fight of his life—of our lives—to defend our country and maybe it will show white people that we can also belong to and defend this place. We built it too, after all. It is as much our country to defend as anyone else’s.
All I thought was really missing from your articles was a fix for us, us meaning Negro women. We are still in the shadow of the Great Depression now, but the war has made it so that some girls have been picked up by unions, in factories and such. Maybe you could ask the mayor or somebody to set us up with different work. Something that pays and helps our boys/men overseas, but doesn’t keep us sweating over pails of steaming laundry for thirty cents an hour or less. Seems like everyone but the Negro woman has found a way to contribute to the war and also put food on the table. It’s hard not to feel left behind or overlooked.
Thank you for telling the truth about the lives we have to live now, even if it is hard to see. Eventually, I pray, we will have a different story to tell. My mother always says she brought us up here to lay our burdens down, not to pick up new ones. But somehow, even if we don’t go to war, we still have battles to fight just to live with a little dignity.
I’ve gone on too long now. Thank you for your service.
Respectfully,
Judy Washington
Since the men went to war, there was never enough of anything for Judy and her mother, Margaret, which is how they came to be free Negro women relegated to one of the dozens of so-called slave markets for domestic workers in New York City. For about two years now, her husband, Herbert, had been overseas. He was one half of a twin, her best friend from high school, and her first and only love, if you could call it that.
Judy had moved with her parents from the overcrowded Harlem tenements to the South Bronx midway through her sophomore year of high school. She was an only child. Her father, James, doted on her in part because he and Margaret had tried and tried when they were back home in the South for a baby, but Judy was the only one who made it, stayed alive. He treasured her, called her a miracle. Margaret would cut her eyes at him, complain that he was making her soft.
The warmth Judy felt at home was in stark contrast to the way she felt at school, where she often sat alone during lunch. When they were called upon in classes to work in groups of two or three, she excused herself and asked for the wooden bathroom pass, so that she often worked alone instead of facing the humiliation of not being chosen.
She had not grown up with friends nor had Margaret, so it almost felt normal to live mostly inside herself this way. There were girls from the block who looked at her with what she read as pity. “Nice skirt,” one would say, almost reluctantly.
“Thanks,” she’d say, a little shy to be noticed. “Mother made it.”
Small talk was more painful than silence. How had the other Negro girls managed to move with such ease here, after living almost exclusively with other Negroes down in Harlem? Someone up here was as likely to have a brogue accent as a Spanish one. She didn’t mind the mingling of the races, it was just new: a shock to the system, both in the streets she walked to go to school and to the market but also in the halls of Morris High School.
Judy had been eating an apple, her back pressed against the cafeteria wall when she saw Herbert. He was long faced with a square jaw and round, black W.E.B. Du Bois glasses.
“That’s all you’re having for lunch, it’s no wonder you’re so slim,” he said, like he was continuing a conversation they had been having for a while. Rich coming from him, with his lanky gait, his knobby knees pressing against his slacks.
A pile of assorted foods rose from his blue tray, tantalizing her. A sandwich thick with meat and cheese and lettuce, potato chips off to the side, a sweating bottle of Coke beside that. For years, they had all lived so lean that it had become a shock to suddenly see some people making up for lost time with their food. Judy finished chewing her apple and gathered her skirt closer to her. “You offering to share your lunch with me?”
Herbert gave her a slight smile. “Surely you didn’t think all this was for me?”
They were fast friends after that. It was easy for her to make room for a man who looked at her without pity. There had always been room in her life for someone like him: one who saw, who comforted, who provided. Her father, James, grumbled disapproval when Herbert asked to court, but Herbert came with sunflowers and his father’s moonshine.
“What kind of man do you take me for?” James asked, eyeing Herbert’s neat, slim tie and sniffing sharply to inhale the obnoxious musk of too much aftershave.
“A man who wants his daughter to be loved completely,” Herbert said. “The way that I love her.”
Their courting began. Judy had no other offers and didn’t want any. That they had James’s blessing before he died from a heart attack and just as they were getting ready to graduate from high school only softened the blow of his loss a little. As demure and to herself as she usually was, burying her father turned Judy more inward than Herbert expected. In his death, she seemed to retreat into herself the way that she had been when he approached her that lunch hour. To draw her out, to bring her back, he proposed marriage.
She balked. “Can I belong to someone else?” Judy asked Margaret, telling her that Herbert asked for her hand. “I hardly feel like I belong to myself.”
“This is what women do,” Margaret said immediately.
The ceremony was small, with a reception that hummed with nosy neighbors stopping over to bring slim envelopes of money to gift to the bride and her mother. The older Negro women in the neighborhood, who wore the same faded floral housedresses as Margaret except for today, when she put one of her two special dresses—a radiant sky blue that made her amber eyes look surrounded in gold light—visited her without much to say, just dollar bills folded in their pockets, slipped into her grateful hands. They were not exactly her friends; she worked too much to allow herself leisure. But some of them were widows, too. Like her, they had survived much to stand proudly on special days like this.
They settled into the plans they made for their life together. He joined the reserves and, in the meantime, became a Pullman porter. Judy began work as a seamstress at the local dry cleaner. Whatever money they didn’t have, they could make up with rent parties until the babies came.
Now all of that was on hold, her life suspended by the announcement at the movies that the US was now at war. The news was hard enough to process, but Herbert’s status in the reserves meant that this was his time to exit. She braced herself when he stood up to leave the theater and report for duty, kissing her goodbye with a rushed press of his mouth to her forehead.
Judy and Margaret had been left to fend for themselves. There had been some money from Herbert in the first year, but then his letters—and the money—slowed to a halt. Judy and Margaret received some relief from the city, but Judy thought it an ironic word to use, since a few dollars to stretch and apply to food and rent was not anything like a relief. It meant she was always on edge, doing what needed doing to keep them from freezing to death or joining the tent cities down along the river.
Her hours at the dry cleaner were cut, so she and Margaret reluctantly joined what an article in The Crisis described as the “paper bag brigade” at the Bronx Slave Market. The market was made up of Negro women, faces heavy for want of sleep. They made their way to the corners and storefronts before dawn, rain or shine, carrying thick brown paper bags filled with gloves, assorted used work clothes to change into, rolled over themselves and softened with age in their hands. A few of them were lucky enough to have a roll with butter, in the unlikely event of a lunch break.
Judy and Margaret stood for hours if the boxes or milk crates were occupied, while they waited for cars to approach. White women drivers looked them over and called out to their demands: wash my windows and linens and curtains. Clean my kitchen. A dollar for the day, maybe two, plus carfare.
The lists were always longer than the day. The rate was always offensively low. Margaret had been on the market for longer than Judy; she knew how to negotiate. Judy did not want to barter her time. She resented being an object for sale.
“You can’t start too low, even when you’re new,” Margaret warned Judy when her daughter joined her at Simpson Avenue and 170th Street. “Aim higher first. They’ll get you to some low amount anyhow. But it’s always going to be more than what you’re offered.”
Everything about the Bronx Slave Market, this congregation of Negro women looking for low-paying cleaning work, was a futile negotiation. An open-air free-for-all, where white women in gleaming Buicks and Fords felt just fine offering pennies on the hour for several hours of hard labor. Sometimes the work was so much, the women ended up spending the night, only to wake up in the morning and be asked to do more work—this time for free.
Judy and Margaret could not afford to work for free. Six days a week, in biting winter cold that made their knees numb or sweltering heat rising from the pavement baking the arches of their feet, they wandered to the same spot. After these painful experiences, day after day all week, Judy and Margaret gathered at the kitchen table on Sundays after church to count up the change that could cover some of the gas and a little of the rent. It was due in two days, and they were two dollars short. Unless they could make a dollar each, they would not make rent.
Rent was sometimes hard to come up with, even when James was alive, but when he died, their income became even more unreliable. They didn’t even have money enough for a decent funeral. He was buried in a pine box in the Hart Island potter’s field. James was the only love of Margaret’s life, and still, when he was gone, all she said to Judy was, “There’s still so much to do.”
Judy’s deepest wish for Margaret was for her to rest and enjoy a few small pleasures. What she overheard between her parents as a child were snippets and pieces of painful memories. Negroes lynched over rumors. Girls taken by men to do whatever they wanted. “We don’t need a lot,” she heard Margaret say once, “just enough to leave this place and start over.”
Margaret’s family, like James’s, had only known the South. Some had survived the end of slavery by some miracle, but the Reconstruction era was a different kind of terror. Margaret was the eldest of five children, James was the middle child of eight. A younger sibling left for Harlem first, and sent letters glowing about how free she felt in the north. So, even once Margaret convinced James they needed to take Judy someplace like that, it felt to Judy that she always had her family in the South and the way they had to work to survive on her mind.
Judy fantasized about rest for herself and for her mother. How nice it would be to plan a day centered around tea, folding their own napkins, ironing a treasured store-bought dress for a night out. A day when she could stand up straight, like a flower basking in the sun, instead of hunched over work.
Other people noticed that they worked harder and more than they should as women, as human beings. Judy thought Margaret maybe didn’t realize another way to be was possible. So she tried to talk about the Bronx Slave Market article in The Crisis with her mother. Margaret refused to read a word or even hear about it. “No need reading about my life in no papers,” she said.
Refusing to know how they were being exploited didn’t keep it from being a problem. But once Judy knew, she couldn’t keep herself from wanting more. Maybe that was why Margaret didn’t want to hear it. She didn’t want to want more than what was in front of her.
Herbert’s companionship had fed her this kind of ambition and hope. His warm laughter, the way she could depend on him to talk her into hooky once in a while, to crash a rowdy rent party and dance until the sun came up, even if it got her grounded and lectured, was—especially when James died—the only escape hatch she could find from the box her mother was determined to fit her future inside. So, when Herbert surprised her at a little traveling show in Saint Mary’s Park, down on one knee with his grandmother’s plain wedding band, she only hesitated inside when she said yes. It wasn’t the time to try and explain that there was something in her yawning open, looking for something else, but maybe she could find that something with Herbert. Her mother told her to stop wasting her time dreaming and to settle down.
At least marrying her high school buddy meant she could move on from under Margaret’s constant, disapproving gaze. They had been saving up for new digs when Herbert was drafted—but now that was all put on hold.
The dream had been delicious while it felt like it was coming true. Judy and Herbert were both outsiders, insiders within their universe of two. Herbert was the only rule follower in a bustling house full of lawbreaking men and boys; Judy, the only child of a shocked widow who found her purpose in bone-tiring work. Poverty pressed in on them from every corner of the Bronx, and neither Judy nor Herbert felt they belonged there. But they did belong to each other, and that wasn’t nothing.
Joshunda Sanders is an award-winning author, journalist and speechwriter. A former Obama Administration political appointee, her fiction, essays and poetry have appeared in dozens of anthologies. She has been awarded residencies and fellowships at Hedgebrook, Lambda Literary, The Key West Literary Seminars and the Martha’s Vineyard Institute for Creative Writing. Women of the Post is her first novel.
A kid walks into your bookstore and… Guess what? He’s your son. The one you put up for adoption eighteen years ago. The one you never told anyone about. Surprise!
And a huge surprise it is.
It’s a huge surprise to his adoptive mother, Monica, who thought she had a close relationship with Matthew, her nearly adult son. But apparently, he felt the need to secretly arrange a vacation to Cape Cod for the summer so he could meet his birth mother…without a word to either her or his dad.
It’s also a surprise— to say the least—to Harlow, the woman who secretly placed her baby for adoption so many years ago. She’s spent the years since then building a quiet life. She runs a bookstore with her grandfather, hangs out with her four younger siblings and is more or less happily single, though she can’t help gravitating toward Grady Byrne, her old friend from high school. He’s moved back to town, three-year-old daughter in tow, no wife in the picture. But she’s always figured her life had to be child-free, so that complicates things.
When Matthew walks into Harlow’s store, she faints. Monica panics. And all their assumptions—about what being a parent really means—explode. This summer will be full of more surprises as both their families are redefined…and as both women learn that for them, there’s no limit to a mother’s love.
A LITTLE RAY OF SUNSHINE by Kristan Higgins is an emotionally intense women’s fiction family drama with romantic elements featuring a bookstore owner on Cade Cod and the son she gave up for adoption eighteen years previously. While this standalone is a great read, it has a cover which may lead you to believe this is a light summer read, it definitely is not.
Every year the Patel family takes an extended summer vacation to a different location. This year seventeen-year-old Matthew has talked the family into going to Cape Cod. He and his father arrive first, while his mother and younger sister will arrive when her school year is over. Matthew and his father go into the local independent bookstore and when the owner, Harlow sees them, she faints.
Harlow secretly placed her son up for adoption the summer between her freshman and sophomore year of college. She picked the family her son would go to, but he was not supposed to be able to contact her if he chose until his eighteenth birthday. He found her online and did not tell his adoptive family that this was his reason for the Cape Cod vacation. Now he is here for the summer and while she is excited, she is also about to have her quiet life blown up.
There is so much happening in this story. Harlow is dealing with seeing a beautiful grown son who wants to get to know her and her family. She also must tell her family about having a child at eighteen for the first time. Monica Patel is dealing with a son who has lied to the family and the fear of him choosing his birth mother over her love. The two mothers’ emotions and point of view pull you into this drama because you can empathize with both. Matthew is dealing with questions children of adoption are known to have and his emotional shifts are as heart wrenching as the two mother’s stories. There are several characters with side stories woven throughout that lighten the emotional angst at times, or bring a bit of romance into the plot, but overall this is a story where you will want to have the tissues close by your side.
I highly recommend this emotionally charged women’s fiction!
***
About the Author
Kristan Higgins is the New York Times, USA TODAY and Publishers Weekly bestselling author of more than twenty novels, wKristan Higgins is the New York Times, USA TODAY, Wall Street Journal and Publishers Weekly bestselling author of more than twenty novels. Her books have been translated into more than 20 languages and have sold millions of copies around the world. Kristan has been praised for her mix of “laugh-out-loud humor and tear-jerking pathos,” which the author attributes to a diet high in desserts and sugar-based mood swings.
Kristan’s books have received dozens of awards and accolades, including starred reviews from People Magazine, Entertainment Weekly, Good Morning America, Kirkus, the New York Journal of Books, Publishers Weekly, Library Journal, National Public Radio and Booklist. She personally responds to every reader letter she receives, even the mean ones.
Kristan is the mother of two ridiculously good-looking children and the grandmother of the world’s cutest baby. She lives in Connecticut and Cape Cod with her heroic firefighter husband, a rescue mutt and indifferent cat. In her spare time, Kristan enjoys gardening, easy yoga classes, mixology and pasta.
