2 Books Published by Chattel House Books on AALBC — Book Cover Collage

The third book in the Blades Overstreet series finds Blades facing a crisis. His estranged father has returned from Barbados and Blades is determined to finally get the truth behind his father’s disappearance many years ago. Distraction comes his way in the form of a plea from a friend begging Blades to help track down his wealthy father’s killers. Blades’ decision to take the case upsets his wife, Anais, who is convinced that Blades gets more satisfaction from chasing criminals than from being her husband. The investigation leads Blades to popular community activist, Odessa Rose, holed up in the Pink Houses with her own private army. Odessa is on a social mission to convert enough undocumented immigrants into citizens to one day affect presidential elections. As he tracks the retired judge’s killers through Brooklyn’s shadowy streets, Blades must outsmart corrupt cops, outrun thugs and outshoot hired killers, even as Blades struggles to resolve the anger which threatens to drown him in his own pit of filial rage.

Themes of coerced displacement and sexual disillusionment run through these stories as they shift between the Caribbean and America, arriving doused in magic, musicality and humor. From the title story about a man trapped in the nightmarish glare of post 9/11 scrutiny after he forgets a bag in Grand Central Station; to the deliciously funny but poignant Sweet Destine about a man unable to deal with his wife’s sexual awakening after they migrate to America; or the darkly comic and passionate Licks Like Peas, Lovell’s lyrical prose delights and captures the vibrant rhythms of love, longing and loss rooted in the Caribbean soul where home is not always where the heart is.