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Amazon
Pearl Street Publishing
Category:
Mainstream
Publisher: Pearl Street Publishing
ISBN-10: 096738673X
Type: Fiction
Pages: 302
Copyright: January 21, 2004
ISBN-13: 9780967386737
October 1994, upstate New York: Audrey Connaroe, a biracial woman, was forced to move back to her hometown when her sister, Laura, was killed in a car accident. She struggles to care for her sister’s old farmhouse and teenage son, Julian, but jobs are scarce and she and Julian will have to move soon if recent interviews don’t pan out. Julian is angry and withdrawn and Audrey’s dreams are haunted by a desperate fugitive.
Audrey dates someone she dated in high school, but not without pressures. James is white and as a teen broke up with Audrey because his mother disapproved of her. Formerly engaged to a model, James recalls Audrey as a rebellious girl who battled with her late father. Julian questions his aunt’s commonsense regarding James, and when his father Harrison “Pritch” Pritchard (who left Laura before he knew she was pregnant) suddenly appears, he does the same.
Audrey’s mother, Yvonne, lives in Florida; she disapproves of everything Audrey does and suggests Julian should live with her. When Audrey travels to Nashville, where Yvonne has fallen ill while traveling, she’s pulled over by a racist cop, Laura’s car dies, and she finally reads papers she’s received that reveal Laura’s house was a stop on the Underground Railroad. Her dreams of the desperate fugitive start to make sense as Audrey begins to consider the true worth of her sister’s old house.
Audrey Conarroe, a biracial woman, never planned to move back to her small, predominantly white, hometown in western New York. But when she was named guardian to her teenage nephew, she had no choice but to do just that. Eight months later, Audrey prepares to sell her sister’s old farmhouse when a series of discoveries forces her to rethink everything she’s ever assumed about love, race, and respect.
Excerpt
What was it about Laura’s THINGS, Audrey wondered. Had Laura cast some spell over them, owned them so completely they possessed elements of her, making them impossible to discard? Perhaps, she reasoned, Laura not only owned things, she placed such emotional value on them that they belonged to her even in her absence, and in her absence, were no longer whole. People, too, Audrey mused, considering in turn her own displacement—as well as Julian’s, Pritch’s, even Yvonne’s—since Laura’s death. Every person Laura had embraced, comforted, claimed so completely now faced an uncertain future devoid of her love. Each stood incomplete in her absence.
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