num_pages: 272
description: The Last Secret ... is psychological novel that examines motivational aspects that propel certain sexually and physically abused siblings to succeed while some siblings linger in repetitive failures. It explores how siblings having had their hopes crushed as children are still haunted by past tyrannies, yet some overcome while others can not muster up the will to forgive and forget the oppressive nature of a tyrannical father. It also looks at how people are distorted by harboring shameful secrets that should never be kept, and how that distortion can remain and affect normal trust that is so vital in relationship. The two main characters function as the protagonists that overcome the antagonism of a contorted past. In the male character's, (Lomax) attempt to assist Dawnelle (the second main character) overcome the contortions of her past, he discovers that he too has secrets of his own family that he has kept unwittingly because there were no triggers to motivate him to explore them. In so discovering, he realizes that one need not consciously know of a past in order to be consciously bound to it. When Lomax discovers his family's secrets, he realizes that without any knowledge of that past, he has been traveling in a path that seemingly is dictated by the incidents and events of that past. But his knowledge of Dawnelle's past and his assistance to her to overcome the nightmares of that past liberate him and move him from a static to a reformed character. This is a present time novel, set in the San Francisco/Oakland Bay Area, and it deals with social and psychological issues and stresses of living that are peculiar all highly educated African-American professionals. These are new types of African American characters. They are not characters bound in slavery, nor are they characters pondering how to get a good man or a good woman, but characters who consider less mundane and universal issues of life. Finally, this is a love story. Lomax is drawn to Dawnelle for sex and she to him for love and the fulfillment of an emptiness she has covered and coped with through her art. But his presence in her life will not allow art to be enough any longer. She needs him and wants all aspects of this man she is in love with. Because of her childhood trauma, she had withheld her love and numbed her emotions. "It was as if her emotions, as a natural cycle of nature, had been hibernating in wait for Spring, and now that it was here, they had come alive and exploded as a time-bomb of nature, blossoming upon Lomax with all their fragrances, hues, gentility, and energy.... And she showed him a magnitude of emotions and love he hadn't experienced."
language: English
title: The Last Secret...
titlecomplete: The Last Secret...
publisher: Mirror-Gibbs Publications