The Care and Feeding of Ravenously Hungry Girls

November 5, 2018
A trio of sisters reeling from a criminal conviction form the center of Gray’s moving debut. Shortly before Thanksgiving 2013, small-town Michigan restaurateur Althea receives a multi-year sentence for food stamp fraud and charity embezzlement. While awaiting transport to prison, Althea makes friends with other inmates and refuses visits from her teenage twins, sullen and explosive Kim and shy Baby Vi. Althea’s youngest sister, Lillian, has lavishly refurbished their childhood home, where she cares for the twins and her ex-husband’s grandmother. The middle sister, Viola, returns from Chicago to help; she has been inadequately coping with a separation from her wife and backsliding into bulimia. Lillian bristles at their brother’s suggestion he take the girls in, fearing he would physically and emotionally abuse them as he did her. After Kim runs away, Viola and Lillian keep the news from Althea while scrambling to find Kim. Gray uses alternate chapters narrated by the three sisters to fill in details of their upbringing by an itinerant preacher father who was prone to abusive outbursts the rare times he was at home, and their current struggles to heal and cope. This is perfect for fans of Brit Bennett’s The Mothers; readers will be deeply affected by this story of a family wrestling to support itself. Agent: Michelle Brower, Aevitas.

December 15, 2018
In this debut novel, three adult sisters confront their family's dark and fractured past while searching for a way forward amid myriad challenges including prison time, eating disorders, and long-buried secrets.Growing up, the Butler children--Althea, Viola, Joe, and Lillian--had it rough. When their mother died young and their abusive preacher father hit the road for months at a time, it fell to 12-year-old Althea and her friend Proctor, who would eventually become her husband, to raise her siblings. The story opens in the present day, with now middle-aged Althea and Proctor in jail awaiting sentencing for committing fraud and stealing from both the federal government and fellow citizens of their small Michigan town, where they were restaurateurs and community organizers. The couple's twin teenage daughters, Kim and Baby Vi, are living with Lillian, struggling with the aftermath of their parents' crimes and demons of their own. Gray, a journalist, shares biographical similarities with her characters: Like the Butlers, Gray is black and grew up in a predominantly white Michigan town, the daughter of a preacher. And like Viola, Gray is gay and in recovery from bulimia. When Viola, on her way back to Michigan from her apartment in Chicago for Althea's sentencing, holes up in a motel room gorging on junk food and vomiting, Gray's descriptions of the binge-and-purge cycle are particularly visceral: "While I wait for the toilet to collect itself for another flush, I go to the sink, still feeling light as air. Still enjoying the fuzzy, white-noise sense of calm. Xanax couldn't make me feel any mellower, I don't think." Gray manages a large cast of characters with ease, sharply differentiating between the voices of hardheaded Althea, shrewd Viola, and hesitating Lillian, who narrate the novel in alternating chapters. Scenes of Althea attending Bible study in jail and grappling with her faith tend to drag and read as extraneous to the more pressing family dramas at hand.A deep dive into the shifting alliances and betrayals among siblings.

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December 15, 2018
Gray's engrossing and moving debut novel considers secrets and lies and their effect on the families of three sisters. Growing up, Althea took care of her younger siblings after their mother died, but now that she and her husband are facing prison sentences, she will be the one who needs all the help she can get. Lillian, the youngest sister, steps in to take care of Althea's children, angry Kim and shy Baby Vi, while middle sister Viola travels in from Chicago to help. Lillian and Viola are already fighting their own battles?Lillian cares for her elderly mother-in-law and struggles with the legacy of childhood abuse at the hands of her brother, while Viola is in the throes of an eating-disorder relapse. Alternating among each sister's perspective, the story unravels at a measured pace, deliciously feeding the reader surprises about the past and present throughout. This is a good choice for readers who enjoyed Caroline Leavitt's Cruel Beautiful World (2016), Tayari Jones' An American Marriage (2018), and other family dramas.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2018, American Library Association.)

September 15, 2018

Sisters Althea, Viola, and Lillian are knot-tight, with eldest Althea the de facto matriarch of a family seen as top of the heap in their town. So when Althea and husband Proctor are arrested for mysterious reasons and townsfolk turn their heads in disgust, Viola and Lillian take over caring for their teenage nieces. From award-winning CNN journalist Gray, a debut purchased with a second novel in auction.

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