Children of the Waters

Still reeling from divorce and feeling estranged from her teenage son, Trish Taylor is in the midst of salvaging the remnants of her life when she uncovers a shocking secret: her sister is alive. For years Trish believed that her mother and infant sister had died in a car accident. But the truth is that her mother fatally overdosed and that Trishs grandparents put the baby girl up for adoption because her father was black.

After years of drawing on the strength of her black ancestors, Billie Cousins is shocked to discover that she was adopted. Just as surprising, after finally overcoming a series of health struggles, she is pregnant–a dream come true for Billie but a nightmare for her sweetie, Nick, and for her mother, both determined to protect Billie from anything that may disrupt her well-being.

"Brice's uneven second novel (after Orange Mint and Honey) follows two lonely women as they discover they have a lot in common. Having survived a messy divorce and a move back to her hometown of Denver, Trish Taylor already has her hands full raising her teenage son when she reads a letter left by her deceased grandmother. In it, her grandmother reveals that Trish's mother died from a heroin overdose and Trish's baby sister, Billie, was given up for adoption because the father was black. Despite her grandparents' prejudice, Trish has no issues with race. She's white, her ex-husband is black, but Billie is unwilling to believe that her adoptive parents would have kept the secret that she was adopted and is biracial. Billie has other problems as well: an unplanned pregnancy has sent her jazz-musician boyfriend packing and she, like Trish, has lupus. Brice sets up the sisters for the blandest of confrontations (one watches chick flicks, the other teaches African dance), but as they come together in the second half of the book, the initially stock characters develop enough to compensate for a narrative tending toward melodrama. (July)" Publishers Weekly (Copyright Reed Business Information, Inc.)

Carleen Brice was recently named 2008 “Breakout Author of the Year” by The African American Literary Awards Show for her debut novel Orange Mint and Honey, which was also a selection of the Essence Book Club. She is also the author of Walk Tall:Affirmations for People of Color, and Lead Me Home: An African Americans Guide Through the Grief Journey and edited the anthology Age Aint Nothing but a Number: Black Women Explore Midlife. She lives in Denver, Colorado, with her husband and two cats.