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Children of the Waters: A Novel by Carleen Brice
The author of the #1 Denver Post bestseller and Essence Book Club Pick Orange Mint and Honey explores the connection between love and race, and what it really means to be a family. AUTHOR BIO Carleen Brice’s debut novel, Orange Mint and Honey (One World/Ballantine), was an Essence “Recommended Read” and a Target “Bookmarked Breakout Book.” For this book, she won the 2009 First Novelist Award from the Black Caucus of the American Library Association and the 2008 Break Out Author Award at the African American Literary Awards Show. Her second novel, Children of the Waters (One World/Ballantine), a book about race, love and family, is available now where ever books are sold. If you don't see it at your local retailer, please go to the representive and request it. You can read an excerpt at her website www.carleenbrice.com.
She also edited and contributed to the anthology Age Ain’t Nothing but a Number: Black Women Explore Midlife, which was published in the U.S. (Beacon Press) and the U.K. (Souvenir Press). She is author of Lead Me Home: An African American’s Guide Through the Grief Journey (Avon/HarperCollins). Her book Walk Tall: Affirmations for People of Color, an Essence bestseller, was in print with traditional publishers for 10 years and sold 100,000 copies. It is currently available through iUniverse and Louis Gossett Jr.'s Eracism Foundation. Carleen and her husband live in Colorado.
Trish Taylor’s white ancestry never got in the way of her love for her black ex-husband, or their mixed race son, Will. But when Trish’s marriage ends, she returns to her family’s Denver, Colorado home to find a sense of identity and connect to her past. What she finds there shocks her to the very core: her mother and newborn sister were not killed in a car crash as she was told. In fact, her baby sister, Billie Cousins, is now a grown woman; her grandparents had put her up for adoption, unwilling to raise the child of a black man. Billie, who had no idea she was adopted, wants nothing to do with Trish until a tragedy in Billie’s own family forces her to lean on her surprisingly supportive and sympathetic sister. Together they unravel age-old layers of secrets and resentments and navigate a path toward love, healing, and true reconciliation.
Children of the Waters: A Novel by Carleen Brice
Pub date: June 23, 2009 ISBN: 978-0345499073
EXCERPT: PROLOGUE
Time was short. Maxine Kuepper was starting to say things she didn’t mean. Yesterday, she told her granddaughter to Move my dish, when she wanted to ask her to bend her leg. Trish stared, stumped and afraid, yet all Maxine could do was yell the word “dish” over and over knowing that she wasn’t making any sense. Cell by cell, bone by bone, Maxine was floating away. She didn’t know if it was the cancer or the medication that made her say such things. She was wearing a patch that released heavy doses of relief into her bloodstream, and still the littlest weight on her, like a sheet or the cotton nightgowns they dressed her in, hurt. The nurse promised that when the time came Maxine wouldn’t have any pain. “We’ll snow you out,” the nurse assured her. “Don’t worry.” Maxine would die the way her daughter did: like a mermaid swimming at the bottom of an ocean of drugs. It was small comfort after all these years to believe that Jocelyn hadn’t been in any pain when she died. Jocelyn. Such a cultivated name for a daughter who would not be tamed.
They were coming for her, Jocelyn and John, her husband, both dead. She dreamed of them so much now that sometimes she could swear they were really here in this room, whispering their secrets to her. They were coming for her. If they weren’t already here, she knew they were just over the other side waiting. And even though she was only sixty years old and her granddaughter Trish was only seventeen, she was ready to join them. But she had one last thing she had to do. She had secrets of her own to tell. She looked at the Polaroid picture she’d kept hidden for thirteen years.
Not even John knew she had proof of this moment. There was Jocelyn, blond and movie-star gorgeous even after just giving birth, holding the baby, only hours old with a cap of thick dark hair. And Trish, smiling wide, skin, teeth and hair white as cream, on the hospital bed next to them. Both girls marked with a stain that couldn’t be washed away. Maxine wished she had done things differently. But wishes are for the living. She sighed and pain rippled through her as her lungs pushed up against the battlefield of her ribs and the space where her left breast used to be. She raised the pen with the same amount of exertion that it used to take to lift a gallon of milk and began to write. The nurse said don’t worry. But how could she not?
What would they think of her? Would they hate her or would they be glad to know the truth? Probably both. But she would do this one last thing for them. She would make things right. As soon as Trish came home, Maxine would give her the letter. I should have told you this a long time ago, she wrote to her granddaughter, putting everything that was in her battered heart onto the page so that when the time came cowardice wouldn’t seal her lips. Each word, a lifetime. Just as she finished, she heard the front door open and close. Or she thought she did. Lately it was hard to tell what sounds were real and what sounds were memories sweeping over her like ocean waves.
But if it was Trish coming in, Maxine knew she did not have the strength to see the look on her granddaughter’s face after she read this letter. She didn’t have the strength to answer the question she knew would come no matter how hard she tried to explain: How could you? She opened the box, put the letter and photo inside, and replaced the lid. After she was gone, Trish would find everything she needed to know. When Maxine was buried, her lies would be unearthed. It wouldn’t be long now. She was sipping life from a glass that was neither half empty, nor half full, a glass emptying so rapidly she could see it in the eyes of the hospice nurses and the few friends who came to visit her at home.
The bedroom door opened, and Trish poked her head in. “Nana, you awake?” Maxine nodded, thinking For now, and, Please God let them forgive me.
What are some of the topics addressed in Children of the Waters?
--- Paths toward love, healing, and true reconciliation
--- Feeling secure in your own identity
--- Surviving a messy divorce
--- Raising teenage sons
--- Effects generational racism
--- Handling of Lupus
--- Hidden secrets and adoption
--- Embracing a bi-racial heritage
--- The importance of sisterhood
Amazon
http://www.amazon.com/Children-Waters-Novel-Carleen-Brice/dp/0345499077
Borders
http://www.borders.com/online/store/TitleDetail?sku=0345499077
Barnes and Noble
http://search.barnesandnoble.com/Children-of-the-Waters/Carleen-Brice/e/9780345499073
IndieBound
http://www.indiebound.org/book/9780345499073
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Carleen Brice, Author of Children of the Waters
June 2009 www.carleenbrice.com
Complacency with our traditional judgement based thinking methods is not enough. Our existing thinking habits are excellent just as the rear wheel of a motor car is excellent but not enough. We need to put far more emphasis on creative and design thinking. Judgement and analysis are not enough.
Edward de Bono
Business is recognizing the role it can play in combatting climate change. Thank God, is all I can say, for there is a desperately urgent need for business to play that role. Your lobbying influence can be substantial, but together, united and in large enough numbers it could prove decisive in turning the tide.
Prince Charles
Never give in.. never, never, never, never, in nothing great or small, large or petty, never give in except to convictions of honour and good sense. Never yield to force.. never yield to the apparently overwhelming might of the enemy.
Winston Churchill
Every individual’s purpose in tithing is to open up his/her awareness of universal laws. Tithing opens you, to you. You are an unlimited individual, deprived of a fuller, richer life partly because of lack of the tithing experience and expression in life.
Mark Victor Hansen -
As a tither you automatically become solution-oriented rather than problem-oriented.
Mark Victor Hansen -
Miracles never cease to amaze me. I expect them, but their consistent arrival is always delightful to experience.
Mark Victor Hansen -
One of my goals is to inspire people to be all that they can be and, hopefully, be a good example and teach some useful, interesting principles. Perhaps I can be the key that turns on the engine in their life, and then they can take their car where they want. Mark Victor Hansen
Black Pearls Featured author Danette Majette
View the Black Pearls Magazine here: http://www.blackpearlsmagazine.com
Meet author Danette Majette on BAN Radio to discuss her new book, "Good Girl Gone Bad".
Her BP page: http://www.blackpearlsmagazine.com/danettemajette.htm
Showtime: Monday, April 6, 2009 at 8:00pm EST
Call in to Speak to Danette and host Ella Curry: 646-200-0402
Chat room: http://www.blogtalkradio.com/black-author-network
Good Girl Gone Bad (Contemporary Fiction)
by Danette Majette
Release date- April 8, 2009
ISBN 10 – 1934230669
ISBN 13 - 9781934230664
Most people think when you say, “I do,” all problems come to an end. When happily ever after seems impossible, three women transform from good girls to bad women. Just when they think they’ve made it out of the grimy streets to a more ideal lifestyle in the suburbs, their lavish lives turn sour. Unfortunately, for the sexy threesome they are all suddenly faced with financial hardships that land them between a rock and a hard place.
Danette Majette
District Heights, MD 20753
Email: dcmajette@gmail.com
Buy Books at: www.lifechangingbooks.net
Michael Taylor author of A New Conversation with Men
Website: http://www.anewconversationwithmen.com
Email: mtcreates@comcast.net
ISBN-10: 1605635804
ISBN-13: 978-1605635804
Michael Taylor is a self educated entrepreneur, author, personal coach and radio show host. He is President & CEO of Creation Publishing Group, a company that publishes and promotes books and seminars that empower men to reach their full potential. He has been facilitating workshops and seminars for over fifteen years and he has inspired thousands through his books, seminars and radio program. He is a proud father of three grown children, is happily married and resides in Houston, Texas.
“Men hate each other because they fear each other, and they fear each because they don’t know each other; they don’t know each other because they are often separated from each other.” —Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.
Is it possible to: Teach men to become great fathers? Encourage men to become better husbands?
Teach men to live with passion and purpose? Get men involved in improving their communities? Join entrepreneur, author, motivational speaker, and radio-show host Michael Taylor as he shares how creating a new paradigm of masculinity can help heal America.
This book is written to inspire men of all ethnicities, ages, socio-economic levels, and religions to come together to redefine manhood and to eradicate the multiplicity of challenges facing America today. Its intention is to remove the separation among men and remove the hatred, fear, and distrust that too many men feel about each other. It is a powerful, inspirational document written to educate, motivate, and inspire all men to reach their full potential. Join the conversation, and become a part of the revolution!
ePostcard Promotional Page
http://www.audioacrobat.com/note/C7ZppQ6Q
Reflections of a Quiet Storm by Patricia A. Bridewell
ISBN 10-0977939863
ISBN 13-9780977939862
As CEO and owner of a new nursing registry, Pauline Bridges is striving to reach the height of success, and then unexpectedly tragedy strikes. After a near fatal automobile accident, she climbs from the wreckage unscathed, but shortly thereafter, God begins to reveal her past. Pain, once buried deep within, rises to the surface through memories that are revived as dreams and flashbacks. Chronicled in a series of stories, her life unfolds through a long journey; a pathway that unveils many secrets that not even her children had been told.
Visions of the past invade her days and nights as constant reminders of events from childhood through her adult life replay in her mind. Memories of her mother’s abuse at the hands of her stepfather, a rape during adolescence, her brother’s stormy lifestyle, and the agony of a marriage that was destroyed by her ex-husband, Naman’s infidelity and substance abuse, all drift through her mind. And then there is the shattering memory of the unsolved murder of her former boss, a vice president for a major recording company. All memories that Pauline had chose to forget, but now they’re back.
Pauline’s faith is challenged with not only ravaging dreams and flashbacks, but also with supporting her two adult children through their hardships. The ditch grows much deeper when she learns her friend, Vangie, is having an affair with her best friend, Bethany’s husband, Darryl. Pauline temporarily escapes from revolving chaos by wallowing in her corporate world, with the aim of building a high caliber business, and helping friends and family get through their crises.
Her prayers are answered when Keith Maris steps into her life and opens her heart to feelings and emotions that she didn’t know still existed. As their relationship flourishes, he becomes a main support system through the turmoil, and her dreams and flashbacks begin to diminish. When her friend, Bethany, has a mental breakdown after learning of Darryl’s affair; she sets out with the intent to confront them. While brandishing a gun, it accidentally fires, striking Darryl’s shoulder. Pauline intervenes to prevent what could have become a tragedy. Bethany and Darryl stay married after he ends his relationship with Vangie, Pauline supports her son through his father’s terminal illness and subsequent death, and also finally discovers the reasons for her daughter’s turbulent past relationship with her father.
A novel that is based on a true life story.”
Visit www.patriciabridewell.com for book chapter reading and preorder information.
Patricia A. Bridewell author of Reflections of a Quiet Storm
Website: www.patriciabridewell.com
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