It breezed past the church where the bricks were gray and jutted into the dark air and even shone from the dew that was just beginning to settle. They were in a heavy sleep as the moving air wrapped around their chimneys, and stroked their curtained windows, and slid down their banisters. Especially if they’d been at Club Royale earlier. And Sunday they shouted in church and felt the sweet release where grand hats rocked, and high heels stomped or went clickety-clack depending on how the spirit hit.
And brown faces laughed for real, not the mannered tee-hees of the workday, but booming laughs. They’d cram into Club Royale, where redheaded olives danced in gold-colored liquid. Some answered phones or crumpled paper for the government. Then some went to work mopping floors and cooking meals for rich folks, or cleaning fish at the dock, or stitching fine leather shoes or pinch-pleated draperies at the factories on the north side. The people who lived here scrubbed their steps every morning until the sand in the concrete sparkled like diamond pins. Its thin coolness rushed through the streets of South Philly, encircling the tight, sturdy row houses. The black predawn air was filled with movement. Suddenly and unexpectedly a family, Herbie, Noon, and their two girls draw closer-until an outside threat reawakens a fire in Noon, causing her to rise up and fight to hold her family and her community together. Then one day an infant girl is left on their doorstep, and later Ethel blesses them with her five-year-old niece. But their marriage remains unconsummated because of a horrible incident in Noon's past, so each seeks comfort elsewhere: Noon in the warm acceptance of the neighborhood church Herbie in the arms of Ethel, a jazz singer. Noon and Herbie are deeply in love and living in a tightly knit African American neighborhood in South Philadelphia during the 1940s. Writing in a style as accessible as Terry McMillan, yet with the literary touches of Toni Morrison, McKinney Whetstone’s Tumbling is a poignant, exquisitely rendered story of the ties that bind us and the secrets that keep us apart. Tumbling is the beloved bestselling debut novel that launched the luminous career of Diane McKinney Whetstone, critically acclaimed author of Tempest Rising, Blues Dancing, Leaving Cecil Street, and Trading Dreams at Midnight.
An accomplished novel, with sharply drawn characters, exuberant prose, plenty of period detail and a wise, forgiving outlook on family life.” - Los Angeles Times Book Review
0 kommentar(er)
