Title: Singing in the comeback choir
First published: 1998
Description: Forgiveness is the key to the recovery of the soul. It is this lesson that the characters in Bebe Moore Campbell's poignant new novel must learn. Life is good for Maxine McCoy. She is the executive producer of a popular talk show, married to a man she loves, and pregnant with their child. But her security is shattered when a call from the caretaker of her seventy-six-year-old grandmother, who reared the orphaned Maxine, summons her back to the old neighborhood she'd rather forget.

Once a brilliant singing star, Maxine's grandmother, Lindy, has become a smoking, drinking, embittered woman whose glorious voice has atrophied from disuse. The aspiring community Maxine grew up in is now a blighted, crime-infested area, its residents resigned to living narrow lives of fear and despair. Maxine is determined to move her grandmother away from the hopelessness around her, but Lindy is prepared to fight for her independence.

When an opportunity arises for Lindy to sing again, both she and Maxine understand that Lindy and her neighborhood are worthy of restoration.
Subjects: African American singers, African American television producers and directors, Afro-American singers, Afro-American television producers and directors, Fiction, Grandmothers, Women television producers and directors, Singing, Family relationships, African American families, African American women, Television producers and directors, Large print books, Large type books, African Americans, Women, Fiction, general, African americans, fiction, Los angeles (calif.), fiction, Philadelphia (pa.), fiction, California, fiction, Pennsylvania, fiction, New York Times reviewed, Fiction, media tie-in, Women artists, fiction, Grandparents, fiction, Motion picture industry, fiction
Places: California, Los Angeles, Los Angeles (Calif.), Pennsylvania, Pennyslvania, Philadelphia, Philadelphia (Pa.)