Though Mae is filled with syrupy names like "pudding" and "doll face" for the foster girls, she is abusive to her own child, Ramona, a twenty-something stunning beauty. The girls are wrenched from their mother, and as the novel opens they are living in foster care in a working-class neighborhood in the home of Mae, a politically connected card shark.
He disappears and is presumed dead, and their mother suffers an apparent breakdown. But their lives quickly unravel as their father's lucrative catering business collapses. Told with tenderness, insight, and humor, it is a story that the author says is very much a response to the sociopolitical challenges of the last few years.Set in west Philadelphia in the early sixties, Tempest Rising tells the story of three sisters, Bliss, Victoria, and Shern, budding adolescents raised in a world of financial privilege among the upper-black-class. In Our Gen, (Diane McKinney-Whetstone) details the lives of four sexagenarian residents of a suburban retirement community who revel in youthful indulgences as they grapple with aging, regret, and long-held secrets. Her sexagenarian characters Cynthia, Bloc, Tish, and Lavia live more boldly and more honestly than their adult-age children, and probably have more sex too. – Glamour McKinney-Whetstone has a gentle storytelling style peppered with delightful turns of phrase (“The sun had returned as if to retrieve a forgotten fedora”). –Philadelphia Inquirerįocusing on a group of people who aren’t often at the center of stories filled with love, sex and laughter, Our Gen is warm and smart, accessible yet meaningful, a beach read with strong writing and emotional heft.
As always, it’s about characters for McKinney-Whetstone, and these four leap off the page with charm, vitality, and vulnerability. Its main foursome - all nonwhite residents of a schmancy 55+ “active living” community somewhere outside Philly - like to drink, crack jokes and smoke weed, but there are secrets bubbling just under the surface that may threaten the group dynamic. Rooted in intrigue, humor and potential romance, though never far from heartache, Our Gen may be as close as revered and award-winning Philadelphia author Diane McKinney-Whetstone ever comes to the Beach Read section.
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