My Jim
Click to order via Amazon

ISBN: 1400054001
Format: Hardcover, 176pp
Pub. Date: January 2005
Publisher: Crown Publishing Group

A deeply moving recasting of one of the most controversial characters in American literature, Huckleberry Finn's Jim

Written in the great literary tradition of novels of American slavery, My Jim is told in the incantatory voice of Sadie Watson, an ex-slave who schools her granddaughter with lessons of love she learned in bondage. To help her granddaughter confront the decisions she needs to make, Sadie mines her memory for the tale of the unquenchable love of her life, Jim. Sadie's Jim was an ambitious young slave and seer who, when faced with the prospect of being sold, escaped down the Mississippi with a white boy named Huck. Sadie is suddenly left alone. Worried about her children, convinced her husband is dead, reviled as a witch, and punished for Jim's escape, Sadie's will and her love for Jim, even in absentia, animate her life and see her through.

Told with spare eloquence and mirroring the true stories of countless slave women, My Jim re-creates one of the most controversial characters in American literature. A nuanced critique of the great American novel, My Jim stands on its own as a haunting and inspiring story about freedom, longing, and the remarkable endurance of love.

 

Crawfish Dreams
Click to order via Amazon

ISBN: 0385504187
Format: Hardcover, 352pp
Pub. Date: March 2003
Publisher: Doubleday & Company, Incorporated

"The uplifting story of a woman who cooks up a plan to bring her family back together and discovers that love, sharing, and a dash of daring are the secret ingredients that can turn dreams into reality. Camille Broussard can remember a time when she had more pep in her stride and her single-story house was one of the nicest homes in the cozy, well-kept neighborhood of Watts. Her kitchen overflowed with the fragrant aromas of Creole cooking, and the taste of her divine crawfish, rich gumbos, and delicious pralines had family and friends begging for seconds and thirds. The devastation of the Watts riots and the ravages of Reaganomics, however, changed everything. Her neighbors have fled, the church pews are nearly empty on Sunday Mass, and her own children have turned their backs on Watts and on the pride and values Camille instilled in them." Her grandson Nicholas has just finished serving time for a crime he knew better than to commit; her politically active lesbian daughter, Grace, is struggling with an identity crisis; and Yvette, her naive, sexually cloistered daughter, has a husband whose secrets threaten to destroy the bond between mother and daughter. But despite how far they have strayed, Camille, is not ready to give up on the family who has nourished her as she has nourished them. So she decides to combine her love of family and her love of cooking into one great enterprise. She opens Camille's Creole Kitchen and recruits her family to help her get the restaurant on its feet. As the business gradually grows, Camille not only restores her family's spirit and sense of purpose, she also recovers her own lost dreams.

 

Love Like Gumbo 
Click to order via Amazon

ISBN: 0940242753
Format: Paperback, 266pp
Pub. Date: October 1996
Publisher: Fjord Press

Read an AALBC.com Review of Love Like Gumbo 

This is the delectable tale of the Broussard family, Louisiana Creole exiles living in South Central L.A. in the late seventies. Follow daughter Grace as she tries to instigate her Ten Point Plan to leave their bayou culture behind. Read an excerpt from this book