You Gotta Sin to Get Saved
Reesy Braxton, 35, has finally found her birth mother, after alienating her husband, distressing her adoptive mother, and upsetting her sister, Connie, who isn’t happy about finding the mother who deserted them. Charlotte Rogers often thinks about the two children she had to leave behind, and she clings to her third daughter, Cammy. Mason takes a straightforward tale and spins it into an emotionally complex story with unexpected twists. Multiple points of view and flashbacks offer insights along the way as each member of this broken African American family comes into focus—Reesy, who’s raising her two sons as well as Connie’s daughter; Connie, who stops her string of abortions and has a baby, only to give it away; Cammy, who feels responsible for her unstable mother; and Charlotte herself, thrilled to hear from her long-gone daughters but unsure of how to reconnect. Graphic sex and violence stun the reader into realizing how much these women have been through. As always, Mason (This Fire Down in My Soul, 2007) packs an emotional punch readers won’t soon forget. --Shelley Mosley