Redemption Song: A Novel - Hardcover

Berry, Bertice

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0385498446 ISBN 13: 9780385498449

Publisher: Doubleday, 2000

Synopsis

In her fiction debut, comedian and inspirational speaker Bertice Berry has written a spiritual love story that will seep into your bones and remain with you long after the last page has been turned. Redemption Song is a marvelous story about love, the importance of understanding one's history, and the power of books and how they can influence your life.

Josephine "Fina" Chambers and Ross Buchanan meet in Black Images, a small African American bookshop, as they both reach for a rare copy of a slave woman's "memory book." Each refuses to let go of the book until the wise and spirited owner, Miss Cozy, negotiates a deal. Over the next several days, they will read the slave woman's book together in the comfort of the bookstore. In the process, Ross and Fina will realize that the path to their shared future may be linked to something that happened more than a century ago...
Over the next several days, they read the slave woman's book aloud in what becomes the magical cocoon of the bookstore. In the process, they learn about African-American history, the power of the human spirit, and discover four essential elements for the survival of society. Ross and Fina also come to realize that the path to their hearts may be linked to an event that happened more than a century ago.

REDEMPTION SONG is a marvelous story about love, the importance of understanding one's history, and, most of all, about books and how they can influence a person's life. It is also a love song to booksellers everywhere: The Miss Cosy character is modeled after a real African-American bookstore owner. -->

About this title

Review

Miss Cozy Brown, proprietor of a bookstore that specializes in rare and hard-to-find African American titles, goes to sleep one night knowing that something magical is about to happen. She finds herself drawn again to the yellowed manuscript that her grandmother bequeathed to her, Children of Grace, a slave narrative by a woman healer who died long before abolition. Despite its unsparing accounts of cruelty and abuse, hope shimmers from its pages, and the book can only be described as a love story with prophetic overtones, much like Redemption Song. It closes with the promise that slavery will end--the author of the manuscript, Iona, reads the future in the stars--but that true freedom will only come later. The next morning, as Miss Cozy suspected, two strangers are waiting for Black Images to open. They both need a special book, something life-transforming, and their hands fall at the same time on Children of Grace. Miss Cozy glances up as the couple approaches the counter. She "watched these two, as she'd watched so many others. She knew that they had no idea how their lives were going to be affected. Other folks had come to her shop thinking that they had been led to the bookstore because of their own intuition. But she knew better. This was her purpose, her calling: to help others unfold the chapters of their lives by reading between someone else's lines."

Some of what happens to Fina and Ross when Miss Cozy takes them under her wing will not surprise readers. But as they leaf through Children of Grace together, drawing strength from the story, they uncover Iona's "Recipe of Life," with its powerful and remarkably personal message. In her fictional debut, Bertice Berry has written a modern-day fairy tale and a hymn of praise to literature's redemptive power. --Regina Marler

From the Back Cover

"A sparkling, heartfelt debut and a compelling read."
--Connie Briscoe, author of Sisters and Lovers, Big Girls Don't Cry, and A Long Way Home

"A love song to book lovers and booksellers everywhere!"
--E. Lynn Harris, author of Abide With Me

"[A] tear-tugging fiction debut."
--Publishers Weekly

About this edition

• Publisher: Doubleday
• Publication date: 2000
• ISBN 10: 0385498446
• ISBN 13: 9780385498449
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 181