The Other Sister by Cheri Paris Edwards

The Other Sister

The author’s second novel The Other Sister neatly fits into the popular Urban Christian Fiction genre.  It’s the prodigal son recast as the daughter returning home with a lot of baggage stuffed with dirty laundry.  Sanita Jefferson, a preacher’s daughter left her midwest home to get an education in California but somehow sidetracked to Hollywood dreaming of stardom as a video vixen.  There she engaged in sinful conduct falling under the spell of a different kind of preacher man.  The family has its own drama when the prodigal child returns.  Unlike the biblical father James Jefferson withholds his forgiveness.  The older sister Carla copes with professional challenges and an unrequited love when the object of her affection sets eyes on Sanita.  The major and minor cast of characters are all clearly drawn including a lecherous deacon, the busy body church lady and loyal non-judgmental friends.  Sanita’s journey is a spiritual homecoming offering lessons in forgiveness, redemption, and a return to faith.

The story is told from the Third Person Omniscient point of view and what more appropriate technique for a story of faith.  Most editors and agents frown upon this writing method viewed as distracting and confusing jumping from one character’s mind to another.  Cheri Paris Edward appears to be adept in mastering the technique.  As one blogger explains:  “This style is often frowned upon, and comes under fire from many writing style authorities. Nine times out of ten at least, it’s a liability to the book. But there are a few stories that must use this style and come out better for it. Since these stories are few and far between, writers are encouraged to use careful judgment, and avoid omniscient viewpoint unless it would add something extraordinary.”

Like a soap opera, once you get into the drama and characters there’s a desire to follow till the end.  Full of conflict and surprising turns chocked with saccharin melodrama The Other Sister is an extraordinary book.

Wench by Dolen Perkins-Valdez

Dolen Perkins-Valdez’s novel Wench provides a glimpse into the life of a slave woman favored by her Master.  It depicts the complicated consequences of bearing his children and coping with the precarious possibility of falling out of favor.  It’s an unsettling tableau of 1850 Southern slave practices particularly American white slave masters vacationing without their wives rather preferring their slave concubines.  The protagonist Lizzie labors under a complicated burden torn between loving and despising her master.

The setting is the resort Tawawa House near Xenia Ohio, and where now stands Wilberforce University.  The story opens during the summer 1852.  The plot focuses on the relationship of Tennessee planter Nathan Drayle and his slave concubine Lizzie.  Other subplots delve in the lives of five other slaves particularly the women and their masters.  Plans to escape to freedom are hatched with assistance and extinguished by betrayals.

Reading Wench one cannot help but wonder:  What kind of man would lay with a woman at night then tie her up like a dog on a grounded spike the next morning as did Lizzie’s master?  Slave women were forced to comply with sexual advances by their masters on a regular basis. Consequences of resistance often came in the form of physical beatings; thus, an enormous number of slaves became concubines for these men.

Most often the masters were already bound in matrimony, which caused tension and hatred between the slave and the mistress of the house. Many “mulatto” or racially mixed children also resulted from these relations.   The “status of the child” followed that of his or her mother, the child of a white man would not be freed based upon patriarchal genealogy.  Born into slavery these children also became a sore reminder for the mistress of her husbands’ infidelity.  Undeniably those slave masters are the ancestral forbears of a great many White and African Americans.

Publisher:  Harper Collins (Amistad); New York Fiction: ISBN:  978006170647  Date:  2010, 290 pages