Title: Tempest Rising
First published: February 3, 1999
Description: Set in west Philadelphia in the early sixties, Tempest Rising tells the story of three sisters, Bliss, Victoria, and Shern, budding adolescents raised in a world of financial privilege among the upper-black-class. But their lives quickly unravel as their father's lucrative catering business collapses. He disappears and is presumed dead, and their mother suffers an apparent breakdown. The girls are wrenched from their mother, and as the novel opens they are living in foster care in a working-class neighborhood in the home of Mae, a politically connected card shark. Though Mae is filled with syrupy names like "pudding" and "doll face" for the foster girls, she is abusive to her own child, Ramona, a twenty-something stunning beauty. As Ramona struggles with Mae's abuse and her own hatred for the foster children, she also tries to keep at bay a powerful attraction she has for her boyfriend's father.Diane McKinney-Whetstone richly evokes the early 1960s in west Philadelphia in this spicy story of loss and healing, redemption and love.
Subjects: Fiction, Literature, African American families, African Americans, Sisters, Foster children, African American children, Middle class African-Americans, The Sixties (20th century), African-American mother and daughter, Foster care, Domestic fiction, African-American families, African-American sisters, Life changing events, African-American foster children, Fiction, general, Philadelphia (pa.), fiction, Pennsylvania, fiction
Places: Pa.) South Philadelphia (Philadelphia, Philadelphia (Pa.), South Philadelphia (Philadelphia, Pa.)
LC classification: PS3563.C3825 T46 1998