Synopses & Reviews
The New York Times hailed Martha Southgates previous novel, The Fall of Rome, as powerful,” O, the Oprah Magazine called it quietly accomplished,” and Essence lauded it as a bracingly honest look at race, class, and self-acceptance.” With Third Girl from the Left, Southgate brings her acute vision and emotional scope to a larger canvas. This enormously entertaining yet serious novel tells a story of African-American women struggling against all odds to express what lies deepest in their hearts. Like Michael Chabons The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay or E. L. Doctorows Ragtime, it ranges freely through time, fact, and fiction to weave an enthralling story about history and art and their place in the lives of three women. My mother believed in the power of movies and the people in them to change a life, to change her life.” So explains Tamara, daughter of Angela, granddaughter of Mildred the three women whose lives are portrayed in stunning detail in this ambitious novel spanning three generations of one family.
Tulsa, Oklahoma, in 1970 is not a place a smart black girl wants to linger. For Angela, twenty years old and beautiful, the stifling conformity is unbearable. She heads to Los Angeles just as blaxploitation movies are pouring money into the studios and lands a few bit parts before an unplanned pregnancy derails her plans for stardom.
For Mildred, movies have always been a blessed diversion in a life marked by the legacy of the 1921 Tulsa race riots. But after Angela leaves Tulsa following a bitter fight, the distance between them grows into a breach that remains for years. It falls to Tamara, a budding documentarian raised in LA by Angela as though they have no family, no history to help mother and grandmother confront all that has been silenced and left unsaid in their lives.
A bold, beautifully written, and deeply involving novel, Third Girl from the Left deftly examines the pull of the movies, the power of desire, and the bonds of family in a quintessentially American story.
Review
"Gutsy and riveting...The best kind of page-turner, layered with so much authentic detail...What a wonderful story." --Julia Glass, author of Three Junes
"As intense and serious as it is fun and fabulous, Southgate...once again penetrates a hidden world with devastating accuracy." --ZZ Packer, author of DRINKING COFFEE ELSEWHERE
"THIRD GIRL FROM THE LEFT is a powerful testament to mothers and daughters, and how differently we all dream." --Veronica Chambers, author of MISS BLACK AMERICA
"Martha Southgate's THIRD GIRL FROM THE LEFT is a marvelous combination of the movies that inspired it. . .elegant . . . electric." --Ayelet Waldman, author of Daughter's Keeper
"A compelling saga of love, film and family secrets...the three plotlines [Southgate] deftly weaves into a richly textured whole." Kirkus Reviews
"A graceful, insightful novel." --Lisa Shea Elle
"Third Girl From the Left gives us the flip side of Hollywood's glitz and glamour.....A gripping tale." --Margaret Williams, Essence
"Southgate makes [her] women imperfect enough to be interesting, but gives them enough heart so they're sympathetic...Delicious details abound." --Chelsea Cain The New York Times Book Review
"Vivid and spirited....Entertaining, occasionally racy and moving when you least expect it to be." --Stephanie Zacharek Newsday
Review
"Gutsy and riveting...The best kind of page-turner, layered with so much authentic detail...What a wonderful story." --Julia Glass, author of Three Junes
Review
"Gutsy and riveting...The best kind of page-turner, layered with so much authentic detail...What a wonderful story." --Julia Glass, author of Three Junes
"As intense and serious as it is fun and fabulous, Southgate...once again penetrates a hidden world with devastating accuracy." --ZZ Packer, author of DRINKING COFFEE ELSEWHERE
"THIRD GIRL FROM THE LEFT is a powerful testament to mothers and daughters, and how differently we all dream." --Veronica Chambers, author of MISS BLACK AMERICA
"Martha Southgate's THIRD GIRL FROM THE LEFT is a marvelous combination of the movies that inspired it. . .elegant . . . electric." --Ayelet Waldman, author of Daughter's Keeper
"A compelling saga of love, film and family secrets...the three plotlines [Southgate] deftly weaves into a richly textured whole." Kirkus Reviews
"A graceful, insightful novel." --Lisa Shea Elle
"Third Girl From the Left gives us the flip side of Hollywood's glitz and glamour.....A gripping tale." --Margaret Williams, Essence
"Southgate makes [her] women imperfect enough to be interesting, but gives them enough heart so they're sympathetic...Delicious details abound." --Chelsea Cain The New York Times Book Review
"Vivid and spirited....Entertaining, occasionally racy and moving when you least expect it to be." --Stephanie Zacharek Newsday
Review
"A compelling saga of love, film and family secrets...the three plotlines [Southgate] deftly weaves intoa richly textured whole."
Review
"Martha Southgate's THIRD GIRL FROM THE LEFT is a marvelous combination of the movies that inspired it. . .elegant . . . electric." --Ayelet Waldman, author of Daughter's Keeper
Review
"THIRD GIRL FROM THE LEFT is a powerful testament to mothers and daughters, and how differently we all dream." --Veronica Chambers, author of MISS BLACK AMERICA
Review
"Martha Southgate's THIRD GIRL FROM THE LEFT is a marvelous combination of the movies that inspired it. . .elegant . . . electric." --Ayelet Waldman, author of Daughter's Keeper
Review
"A graceful, insightful novel." --Lisa Shea
Review
"As intense and serious as it is fun and fabulous, Southgate...once again penetrates a hidden world with devastating accuracy." --ZZ Packer, author of DRINKING COFFEE ELSEWHERE
Review
"Third Girl From the Left gives us the flip side of Hollywood's glitz and glamour.....A gripping tale." --Margaret Williams, Essence
Review
"Vivid and spirited....Entertaining, occasionally racy and moving when you least expect it to be." --Stephanie Zacharek
Review
"As intense and serious as it is fun and fabulous . . . [Southgate] penetrates a hidden world with devastating accuracy." --ZZ Packer
"Third Girl from the Left tells about the other side of Hollywood in the seventies -- of what it means to be black, sexy, smart, and full of dreams in a land where 'blaxploitation' is as literal as it sounds . . . As intense and serious as it is fun and fabulous." --ZZ Packer, author of Drinking Coffee Elsewhere
"Third Girl from the Left will be justifiably praised as a fine, pulls-no-punches portrait of growing up black and female in 'modern' America, but what amazes me almost more than Southgate's daring is her versatility: she can write fast and hot, then lush and tender, then just plain truthful and burning with heart." --Julia Glass, author of Three Junes, winner of the National Book Award
"Martha Southgate's novel is a loving portrait of three generations of women, as cinematic as any that has been rendered on the big screen. Third Girl from the Left is a powerful testament to mothers and daughters, and how differently we all dream." --Veronica Chambers, author of Miss Black America
"Martha Southgate's vivid, spirited novel Third Girl from the Left is largely about families -- not just the ones we're born into, but the ones we make for ourselves. But it's also about movies and the hold they can have on us, sometimes even despite our better judgment." The Chicago Tribune
"Third Girl from the Left gives us the flip side of Hollywood's glitz and glamour . . . A gripping tale." --Essence
"A graceful, insightful novel." Elle
"Here are two things you'll know for certain after reading Third Girl from the Left: family communication is important, and there's just about nothing cooler than a soul sister in 1970s Los Angeles." The New York Times
"A book with blood in its veins." Newsday
"Erotic love, mother love, movie love: whatever form of desire she describes, Martha Southgate has come up with a voice to adore." TimeOut New York
Synopsis
At the center of this dazzling novel is Angela, a twenty-year-old beauty who leaves the stifling conformity of Oklahoma to search for fame during the rise of blaxploitation cinema in Los Angeles. But for her mother, Mildred, a strait-laced survivor of the 1921 Tulsa race riots, Angela's acting career is unforgivable, and the distance between them grows into a silence that lasts for years. It is only when Angela's daughter, Tamara, a filmmaker, sets out to close the rift between them that the women are forced to confront all that has been left unspoken in their lives.
Bold and beautifully written, Third Girl from the Left deftly explores the bonds of family and the inextricable pull of the movies.
About the Author
MARTHA SOUTHGATE was born and raised in Cleveland. She received her B.A. from Smith College and an M.F.A. from Goddard College. She has been an editor at Essence, a reporter for Premiere and the New York Daily News, and a contributor to the New York Times. She is the author of the critically acclaimed novel The Fall of Rome. Southgate lives in Brooklyn, New York.