Our family of origin is mere happenstance yet powerfully
directs the fate of two longtime friends of different race, age and station, in
the segregated South.
Accidents of Birth – A Novel in Two Parts
Accidents of Birth – a Novel
in two Parts, is a profound
love story. Not man to woman or parent to child or that between siblings or
friends, but the love that emerges when a quirky, illiterate black housekeeper in
central Mississippi accepts the deathbed behest of her mother. “Imogene,” she
said, “It be you work now to love the world.” From such a commitment, in a
racially charged, politically divisive 20th century, an
unforgettable story unfolds.
In Accidents
of Birth Book One, ten-year-old Miss Imogene goes to work with her
mother, a housekeeper for the Sutton family, to learn the only job that will be
open to her in the 1940s in Mississippi. She takes over the position at age 19,
startled at how much move involved it is than it appeared when her mother was
in charge. Following her mother’s invocation to live loving the world, Miss
Imogene’s initial struggles and trials begin almost immediately as she allies herself
with one of her charges, Katie Gayle Sutton, a child prodigy, in order that the
child might survive her abusive parents and succeed as a dancer, the one escape
route life offers her.
Aided by her earthy
wisdom, her sense of humor, her loving husband, her cart horse, Polly, and her
conversations with God Almighty as if He were the guy next door, Miss Imogene persists in her efforts only to find her own
family becoming a target of a century’s old racism erupting once again in
Mississippi.
Accidents of Birth-Book Two spans the rest of the 20th century. For
Miss Imogene, it is an intense and difficult time. She must deal not only with
her own loss but also the return from New York of Miss Katie no longer a girl,
but now a damaged woman. The challenges of the earlier years are maturing from
threat to peril. Miss Imogene sees her own world fill with the pain and
suffering of not just her people but also those associated with the Sutton
family as she is called on to take up the fight for yet another Sutton child. Standing
in the face of unnerving change, she seeks from her mama’s teachings an
understanding sufficient to withstand the racial and social consequences of the
decisions she faces.
A story that will remain with you perhaps always.
Accidents of Birth - A Novel in Two Parts
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