Andrea Smith

Smith has received fellowships from the Frederick Douglass Creative Arts Center and The New York Council on the Arts. She was born and raised in Brooklyn and now lives in Atlanta with her son. She is currently at work on her next novel.

Courtesy of The Bantam Dell Publishing Group

 

The Sisterhood of Blackberry Corner
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ISBN: 0385336233
Pub. Date: May 2006
Format: Hardcover, 320pp
Publisher: Dell Publishing

Canaan Creek, South Carolina, in the 1950s is a tiny town where the close-knit African-American community is united by long-term friendships and church ties. Bonnie Wilder has lived here, on Blackberry Corner, all her life, and would be content but for her deep desire to have a child. She and her husband Naz cannot conceive, and he refuses to adopt. Even the support of her outrageous best friend Thora'to whom Bonnie tells everything'can't help fill the emptiness inside her.

Then Naz finds a blanketed infant on the banks of Canaan Creek, and suddenly Bonnie's life is transformed. She has found her calling. Together with Thora and the rest of the hilarious, tough, and all-too-human women from her church group, Bonnie creates an underground railroad for unwanted babies. But one of these precious gifts will come back to haunt her: a deception begun in good faith comes full circle, ultimately forcing Bonnie to find the courage to confront a difficult truth at the center of her own life.

Filled with compassion, humor, and tenacity in the face of almost insurmountable odds, here is a rich, inspiring tale of friendship and family, sisterhood and mother love'and of finding grace where you least expect it.

 

Friday Night at Honeybee's
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ISBN: 0385336985
Pub. Date: February 2004
Format: Paperback, 306pp
Publisher: Bantam Doubleday Dell Publishing Group

"Everyone who's anyone in the Harlem music scene has heard of Honeybee McColor and the famous Friday night gathers that fill her brownstone to bursting. In the early 1960s, nowhere but "The Big House" attracts so many renowned jazz and blues musicians - and no one but Miss Honeybee attracts such talented lost souls as Forestine Bent and Viola Bembrey." The two women come from opposite worlds: one from the Brooklyn projects, the other from the Baptist, rural South. Both know that they belong elsewhere. A rare and extraordinary singer, Forestine aims to be a star. And Viola, stifled by her religious upbringing, strains to find freedom. But Forestine's single-mindedness endangers the one person she really loves, while Viola blindly finds comfort in a man whose wild ways threaten to consume her. With the help of Miss Honeybee and her remarkable friends - Willa, known for her talent both in the kitchen and on the piano, and the outrageous Vernon, who looks more elegant in a gown than any woman - Forestine and Viola struggle to find the balancing point where music doesn't overpower love.