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Excerpt
The yen for joy shouts like holy sprouting souls - easy as the sweet powder on a butterfly’s wing - when careless human contentions sing,” writes Salome G. Rowe on her astonishing debut novel, A Tale About Lilly.

No one is exempt from the ironically uninhibited, yet panache, style of “coming across” in Rowe’s first novel. This fresh writer examines the veneer that separates passion and personability.

Rowe’s matter-of-fact honesty is sending a wake-up call throughout the world with a strong style that is not swayed by a need to settle into political correctness.

“The ultimate assertion of A Tale About Lilly is that joy must be readily available to all young minds – those that have been left behind in homes filled with dearth as well as those that have been goaded into fabricated conciliations and wealthy casings of quiet,” said Rowe.

This novel shows how love and loyalty can manifest in the mist of discretion. It disproves the myth of ghetto ignorance and shows how sanity and insanity happens one child, one mind - one family at a time. It uncovers a series of heart-wrenching and humorous realities.

This story is a testament about the significance of childhood in the song and dance of family and about joy and its journey. Ironically, Lucretia Beldrin, who appeared the most perplexed in her family, helped break the chain of defeat that is often passed down from generation to generation.


At five years old, Lucretia uses her grandmother’s hexes to try to patch up her fractured family, and she was diagnosed with a phenomenal illness that mocked dual personality disorder when things got out of hand. A Tale About Lilly is about never giving up; it's about how a way out can come from strange behavior, strange things and strangers. This novel is about trust, about survival against all odds.

According to DeKalb County’s Crossroads Newspaper, Rowe, a native of Stone Mountain, feels that readers need to understand the impact [they] have on [their] children and how “children feed off of what they hear and see.”

Lilly represents a way of life,” said Rowe. “But, I can, safely, guarantee that everybody knows or has heard of a Lilly. We sprout like weeds throughout the world. The Lilly inside of each of us forces us free to speak freely without worry of the new-old censors’ reckonings. It also shows that when the rage leaves, the language changes. It reminds us that, in our calm neighborhoods, with our Corvettes, boats and choices, in so many ways, not all of us have moved on up. With cause, some of us do not even realize that we can. A Tale About Lilly asks the dreaded question - Why.

One of my objectives for writing A Tale About Lilly is to illustrate the significance of the transformation of thoughts, words and images into action. This notion of freedom of expression blazes trails in Rowe's first novel.

“The reality behind this fiction leaves no exempted safe-haven,” said Rowe. “Everyone, everywhere can relate to some aspect of this book. My plans are to look straight into the eyes of my readers around the world and share with them the power of this story.”

“I have known Rowe for over 30 years,” said John Walker, an avid reader from Cleveland, Ohio. “I knew that she would do something with her life. I never expected anything different. The world had better watch out, because she is coming out with a very diverse array of books. Like, she said in discussions about the book over the years, “’Everybody, everywhere knows a Lilly.’”, he continued.

Additional signing Tours are planned for Chicago, New York, Los Angeles, New Orleans, Seattle and Miami. The book was purchased by the Cleveland Public Library on a recent tour there. We expect that it will be incorporated into its general literary book inventory by the end of the year.”

Autographed copies of A Tale About Lilly are now available at www.ybonie.com. Non-autographed copies can be purchased around the world in-store by order and on all online book-ordering sites.

“My favorite writers are those who are brave enough to tell it like it “really” is,” said Rowe. They include James Baldwin, Georgia State Professor Dr. David Bottoms and Richard Wright.