About this item
Highlights
- Class, race, and sexuality converge in this page-turning story of desire, jealousy, and survival.
- Author(s): Diane McKinney-Whetstone
- 288 Pages
- Fiction + Literature Genres, Literary
Description
About the Book
With the shimmering, startling detail that is the hallmark of the author's engaging style, this book evokes 1960s west Philadelphia in a spicy story of a mother and daughter forced to confront the brutal secret that has locked their hearts against one another.Book Synopsis
Class, race, and sexuality converge in this page-turning story of desire, jealousy, and survival.
Set in west Philadelphia in the early sixties, Tempest Rising tells the story of three sisters, Bliss, Victoria, and Shern, budding adolescents raised in a world of financial privilege among the upper-black-class. But their lives quickly unravel as their father's lucrative catering business collapses. When their father disappears suddenly, he is presumed dead, sending their mother spiraling into an apparent breakdown. The girls are wrenched from their mother and dumped into foster care in a working-class neighborhood in the home of Mae, a politically connected card shark.
Though Mae lavishes affection onto her foster children, she is abusive to her own child, Ramona, a twenty-something stunning beauty. As Ramona struggles with Mae's abuse and her own hatred for the foster children, she also tries to keep at bay a powerful attraction she has for her boyfriend's father.
In Tempest Rising, McKinney-Whetstone richly evokes the early 1960s in west Philadelphia in this story of loss and healing, redemption, and love.
From the Back Cover
It is 1965 in Philadelphia. Clarise, Finch, and their three adolescent daughters are living the dream life of the black financially privileged when suddenly Finch's lucrative catering business falls on hard times and Clarise suffers an apparent nervous collapse. The daughters are discharged into the foster care of Mae, a politically connected card shark, and her stunningly beautiful, yet mean-spirited, daughter, Ramona. The girls are not only faced with the status change of being catapulted into a working-class neighborhood; they must also deal with the spirit of malignity and jealousy that seems to hover over Mae's house. The girls' presence in and subsequent disappearance from Mae's house force Mae and Ramona to move beyond the abuse that has characterized their relationship and confront the brutal secret that caused their hearts to lock against one another.Review Quotes
"McKinney-Whetstone solidifies her position as a writer of well-crafted, serious popular fiction.... McKinney-Whetstone is masterful at rendering the spaces between people, giving to the air that separates them a taste, a texture, a soul." -- Philadelphia Inquirer
"McKinney-Whetstone's gifts as a writer continue to fascinate." -- San Francisco Chronicle