Babylon Sisters

The conjurer juggles with oranges, and our pleasure in watching springs from the fact that never, even for an instant, is any orange overlooked or sacrificed. So it is listening to Pearl Cleage's richly layered novel. Catherine Sanderson struggles with the question of when it is time to tell the whole truth to her daughter. As she works toward reconciliation with Phoebe, and with Phoebe's father, she also narrowly escapes a dangerous liaison with a criminal who runs a prostitution ring of immigrants. Cleage's pleasing voice is both gentle and strong as she tells this story of spirited African-American women. K.A.T. (c) AudioFile 2005, Portland, Maine

March 14, 2005
Catherine "Cat" Sanderson has a pretty nice life: she likes her consulting business (Babylon Sisters) and her neighborhood (Atlanta's West End), and she's got lovely friends and an absolute peach of a daughter (Phoebe). But said nice life gets complicated when Phoebe takes dramatic steps to find out the identity of her father, which Cat has been lying about for years. Also causing headaches: the sudden, unrelated reappearance of Phoebe's actual father, B.J. (who never knew Phoebe existed and who was, for Cat, "the only operatic moment in my otherwise pretty routine life"), and Cat's new contract with African-American entrepreneur and battle-axe Ezola Mandeville, who runs an eponymous maid service that's highly praised for its generous support of its workers. Of course Sam Hall, Ezola's sexy right-hand man, confides, "We're not really
here to... uplift the race. We're really here to make money." And how they're making that money is a lot worse than one would think. Cleage's (Some Things I Never Thought I'd Do
) intelligent, lively narrative hits numerous notes—domestic drama, romance, thriller—right in tune. Agent, Denise Stinson
.