In the Shadow of the Peacock - Softcover

Edwards, Grace

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0595129404 ISBN 13: 9780595129409

Publisher: iUniverse, 2000

Synopsis

Advance Praise for In the Shadow of the PeacockRita Mae Brown, author of Rubyfruit Jungle"I was moved no end by In the Shadow of hte Peacock. The sheer power of Yearwood's story makes you feel as if you've been privy to everyone's secrets and desires. [It] is an absorbing and evocative portrait of a mother and a daughter, caught in the shadows of each other's pain and the slow dance within which they escaped it. It is also a stunning, moving photograph, illustrating how strong love can and should be between friends as well as men and women. With a poet's compression, Yearwood's prose has the resonance and sound of guitar strings tightening, then being plucked: the echo, suspense and powe exuberate from one page to the next, carrying you through a myriad of emotions that she's so good at capturing."Terry McMillan, author of Momma"Both thoughtfully an stylishly, yearwok unfolds twenty-five years of Black urban history. That so much serious endeavor and accomplishment can e recorded in the shadow of that Peacock bar is both a tribute to the author and to the people she salutes."Carlyn See, author of Golden Days

About this title

About the Author:

Grace F. Edwards is the Secretary of The Harlem Writers Guild. In the Shadow of the Peacock is her first novel. She is the creator of the Mali Anderson mystery series.

From Publishers Weekly:

The Peacock is a bar in Harlem whose lights cast flickering shadows in the apartment where Frieda has lived with her daughter Celia since the child's birth during a riot in the early 1940s. Celia's father died in that riot trying to save a little boy's grandmother from a burning building. The shock of his death, added to earlier abuse suffered in the South, instills permanent fear in Frieda's heart; as a result, Celia's upbringing is strict and carefully controlled. Forbidden to accept a scholarship to a college outside the city, Celia stays in New York and falls in love with a young man whose experience and style are light-years beyond her own. When her uncles discover that he is the boy who sent Celia's father into the fire, they quietly force him to leave, fearing Frieda will collapse under the strain of that connection. Celia finishes school during the ferment of the '60s and finds a job in publishing, aware that she is one of the new token blacks. Pulling away from her mother, she visits a friend who has moved to the Caribbean and falls in love with a man who asks her to stay. She returns to New York uncertain of her previous ambitions, knowing that she must decide what kind of life she will live. Paying full tribute to the power of love, this first novel is vibrant with emotion and rich with the color and texture of everyday life in Harlem during the '40s, '50s and '60s. The author bears convincing witness to the hopes and sorrows of Celia's coming of age.
Copyright 1988 Reed Business Information, Inc.

About this edition

• Publisher: iUniverse
• Publication date: 2000
• ISBN 10: 0595129404
• ISBN 13: 9780595129409
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 292