Praise Song for the Butterflies
Page 18
Gathering of Waters is available in hardcover, paperback, and e-book editions. Our printed books are available from our website and in online and brick & mortar bookstores everywhere. Digital editions of Gathering of Waters can be purchased wherever e-books are sold.
Glorious
Award-winning novelist Bernice L. McFadden's highly anticipated new historical novel set amidst the Harlem Renaissance.
Glorious was a finalist for the 2011 NAACP Image Award for Fiction!
"McFadden's lively and loving rendering of New York hews closely to the jazz-inflected city of myth . . . McFadden has a wonderful ear for dialogue, and her entertaining prose equally accommodates humor and pathos." —New York Times Book Review
"Bernice L. McFadden's novel Glorious, which starts with a bang-up prologue, has a strong main character (based in part on Zora Neale Hurston), hard-driving prose, and historic sweep of several decades, including the years of the Harlem Renaissance, which has always fascinated me." —Jane Ciabattari, National Book Critics Circle President
"The book is sweeping in scope and brings to life the tenuous existence of an African-American artist in the early 20th century." —Vogue (Italian edition)
"I hadn't read a word of hers before [Glorious], but I will follow her from now on." —Alan Cheuse, NPR
"The novel is so intense and sweeping at the same time. Some of the scenes were terrifying, and some were very comic in the irony of what the narrator was experiencing and what she was actually thinking. The word for a journey like this is picaresque, but the ever-impending tragedy makes that word not quite right for this book." —Susan Straight, author of A Million Nightingales
"A wonderful, rich read full of passion, history, wonder, and women you will recognize: Glorious is just that." —Jill Nelson, author of Volunteer Slavery and Let's Get It On
"The seeming inevitability of cruel fate juxtaposes the triumph of the spirit in this remarkably rich and powerful novel. Bernice McFadden's fully realized characters are complicated, imperfect beings, but if ever a character were worthy of love and honor, it is her Easter Bartlett. This very American story is fascinating; it is also heartbreaking, thought-provoking, and beautifully written." —Binnie Kirshenbaum, author of The Scenic Route
Glorious is set against the backdrops of the Jim Crow South, the Harlem Renaissance, and the Civil Rights era. Blending fact and fiction, Glorious is the story of Easter Venetta Bartlett, a fictional Harlem Renaissance writer whose tumultuous path to success, ruin, and ultimately revival offers a candid and true portrait of the American experience in all its beauty and cruelty.
It is a novel informed by the question that is the title of Langston Hughes's famous poem: What happens to a dream deferred? Based on years of research, this heart-wrenching fictional account is given added resonance by factual events coupled with real and imagined larger-than-life characters. Glorious is an audacious exploration into the nature of self-hatred, love, possession, ego, betrayal, and, finally, redemption.
Glorious is available in paperback and e-book editions. Our printed books are available from our website and in online and brick & mortar bookstores everywhere. Digital editions of Glorious can be purchased wherever e-books are sold.
The Warmest December
The long-awaited reissue of McFadden's best-selling second novel praised by Toni Morrison, USA Today, the Washington Post, and others—published simultaneously with McFadden's new novel Gathering of Waters.
"McFadden's reissued second novel takes an unflinching look at the corrosive nature of alcoholism . . . This is not a story of easy redemption . . . McFadden writes candidly about the treacherous hold of addiction." —Publishers Weekly
"Riveting . . . so nicely avoids the sentimentality that swirls around the subject matter. I am as impressed by its structural strength as by the searing and expertly imagined scenes." —Toni Morrison, author of Beloved
"The sharpness of the prose and power of the story make it hard to stop reading even the most brutal scenes . . . The story feels real perhaps because it's familiar . . . Or maybe, as Frey points out, the story is too vivid to be read purely as fiction. But in this Precious-style novel, genre is the least of our concerns." —Bust magazine
"[A] masterpiece . . . full of heart and emotion . . . I hope you love the book as much as I did, and I hope it moves you as much as it did me, changes you as it did me." —James Frey, author of A Million Little Pieces, from the Introduction
"Riveting." —Essence
"Ms. McFadden is one of those rare talents who can keep a reader enthralled regardless of the topic . . . This is a story that cuts across all race and social strata in its need to be told." —Dallas Morning News
"The Warmest December is written with a searing and vivid quality that makes it impossible to stop reading." —Cleveland Plain Dealer
FOR KENZIE, GROWING UP IN THE LOWE HOUSEHOLD means opening the bottom drawer of her father's dresser to choose which belt she'll be whipped with that night, furtive trips to the Bee Hive liquor store for her father's vodka, and dreaming of the day she can escape apartment 5A.
BUOYED BY THE LYRICAL, REDEMPTIVE VOICE that characterizes McFadden's writing, The Warmest December tells the powerful, deeply moving story of one Brooklyn family and the alcoholism and abuse that marked the years of their lives. Narrated by Kenzie Lowe, a young woman reminiscent of Jamaica Kincaid's Annie John, the story moves fluidly between the past and the present as she visits her dying father and finds that choices she once thought beyond her control are very much hers to make. The Warmest December is ultimately a cathartic tale of hope, healing, and forgiveness.
The Warmest December is available in paperback and e-book editions. Our printed books are available from our website and in online and brick & mortar bookstores everywhere. Digital editions of The Warmest December can be purchased wherever e-books are sold.
Nowhere Is a Place
The long-awaited reissue of McFadden's classic novel about a young woman on a journey of self-discovery.
"An engrossing multigenerational saga . . . With her deep engagement in the material and her brisk but lyrical prose, McFadden creates a poignant epic of resiliency, bringing Sherry to a well-earned awareness of her place atop the shoulders of her ancestors, those who survived so that she might one day, too." —Publishers Weekly
"Telling her story from two perspectives and on two levels—the mother-daughter relationship and Sherry’s fictional account—McFadden brings added texture to this story of reconciliation." —Booklist
"Nowhere Is a Place is a powerful portrait of family secrets, damage, and healing, probing deep below the surface of an African American family’s history to mend present day relationships . . . Ms. McFadden has a beautiful writing style that is simultaneously lyrical and transparent. In parts of the narrative, time seems to stand still as she describes an event in riveting minute to minute detail. Other times she employs a kind of poetic shorthand that condenses long periods of time, years even, into a few sentences." —New York Journal of Books
"With a good dose of poignancy about life and finding the wisdom of the world for ourselves, Nowhere Is a Place is a fine addition to modern literary fiction collections." —The Midwest Book Review
Nothing can mend a broken heart quite like family. Sherry has struggled all her life to understand who she is, where she comes from, and, most important, why her mother slapped her cheek one summer afternoon. The incident has haunted Sherry, and it causes her to dig into her family’s past. Like many family histories, it is fractured and stubbornly reluctant to reveal its secrets; but Sherry is determined to know the full story. In just a few days time, her extended family will gather for a reunion, and Sherry sets off across the country with her mother, Dumpling, to join them. What Sherry and Dumpling find on their trip is far more important than scenic sites here and there—it is the assorted pieces of their family’s past. Pulled together, they reveal a history of amazing survival and abundant joy.
Nowhere i
s a Place is available in paperback and e-book editions. Our print books are available from our website and in online and brick & mortar bookstores everywhere. The digital edition is available wherever e-books are sold.
Loving Donovan
A long-awaited reissue of this deeply thoughtful novel about hope, forgiveness, and the cost of loving Donovan, a complex man with a shattered history.
"Bernice L. McFadden is one of the best contemporary literary writers out there today . . . Her brilliance, her talent as a novelist, is the very life she breathes into all of her characters.” —Terry McMillan, from the Introduction"
"“A two-time Hurston/Wright Legacy Award finalist also twice honored by the Black Caucus of the American Library Association, McFadden presents a love story starring Campbell and Donovan—both from shattered homes, both still hopeful, and both shaped more by history than they can imagine. Don’t miss.” —Library Journal Prepub Alert, “25 Key Indie Fiction Titles, Fall 2014–Winter 2015″
"Loving Donovan firmly establishes McFadden among the ranks of those few writers of whom you constantly beg for more.” —Black Issues Book Review
With a new introduction by Terry McMillan
The first section of McFadden’s unconventional love story belongs to Campbell. Despite being born to a brokenhearted mother and a faithless father, Campbell still believes in the power of love . . . if she can ever find it. Living in the same neighborhood, but unknown to Campbell until a chance meeting brings them together, is Donovan, the “little man” of a shattered home—a family torn apart by anger and bitterness.
In the face of daunting obstacles, Donovan dreams of someday marrying, raising a family, and playing in the NBA. But deep inside, Campbell and Donovan live with the histories that have shaped their lives. What they discover—together and apart—forms the basis of this compelling, sensual, and surprising novel.
Loving Donovan is available in paperback and e-book editions. Our print books are available from our website and in online and brick & mortar bookstores everywhere. The digital edition is available wherever e-books are sold.
BERNICE L. McFADDEN is the author of nine critically acclaimed novels including Sugar, Loving Donovan, Nowhere Is a Place, The Warmest December, Gathering of Waters (a New York Times Editors’ Choice and one of the 100 Notable Books of 2012), Glorious, and The Book of Harlan (winner of a 2017 American Book Award and the NAACP Image Award for Outstanding Literary Work, Fiction). She is a four-time Hurston/Wright Legacy Award finalist, as well as the recipient of three awards from the BCALA. Praise Song for the Butterflies is her latest novel.
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