Sheer Necessity - Softcover

Mitchell, Sharon

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0451199472 ISBN 13: 9780451199478

Publisher: Signet, 2000

Synopsis

Toni Carleton, a resourceful, proud, and determined young African-American woman struggling to make a success of her hair salon and raise her six-year-old daughter, finds her world turned upside down by a new crisis involving her two younger sisters, Joy and Lynn, that threatens to tear her family apart. Reprint.

About this title

About the Author

Sharon Mitchell received her master's and doctorate in psychology from Ohio State University, and has worked as a counselor and psychologist in university settings in Massachusetts, Delaware, and California. She is currently a psychologist at the University of Delaware, and the author of Nothing but the Rent (Dutton/Signet), and lives in Newark, Delaware.

From Publishers Weekly

Predictable but entertaining, Mitchell's (Nothing but the Rent) second novel centers on 30-year-old Toni Carleton, a black woman in Newark, Del., who is just beginning to realize her dreams. But her difficult family keeps testing her coping abilities with their relentless troubles. Toni is a conscientious single mother who's devoted to her daughter, Sanji, and frustrated with her irresponsible ex-husband, Marvin, who can't keep a job. She's just opened a hair salon with her gay friend Chris, while holding down a second job and attending school. The oldest of three daughters, Toni is constantly worried about her two sisters. Party girl Joy tramps around, borrowing cash and getting high and drunk, all the while concealing a wrenching secret. Lynn, the youngest, a pregnant mother of two, is married to abusive Bruce. Meanwhile, Toni, skittish about dating, meets photographer Beale Jefferson, but their romance is constantly interrupted by additional crises. Toni's mother, Anna Mae, who has a 10th grade education, must pass the GED to keep her job; Chris is on the skids with his lover; Joy disappears, is found in a crack house and sent to rehab, while her young son, Jesse, moves in with Toni. Bruce becomes increasingly hostile, and fragile Lynn returns home with her kids to Anna Mae's house, disrupting her mother's GED studies. Marvin finds Toni's ATM card and siphons her bank account, leading to a bitter feud that puts Sanji in the middle. The domestic troubles are plausible, if overdetermined, and although the denouement is swift and unsurprising, Mitchell's competent tale will find fans in the increasingly popular field of African-American women's fiction. (Oct.)
Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Edition details

• Publisher: Signet
• Publication date: 2000
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0451199472
• ISBN 13: 9780451199478
• Binding: Mass Market Paperback
• Number of pages: 352