Half a Heart - Hardcover

Rosellen Brown is the author of the New York Times bestseller Before and After (FSG, 1992) and three other novels, The Autobiography of My Mother, Tender Mercies, and Civil Wars; a collection of stories, Street Games; and three collections of poetry, Deaths in the Delta, Cora Fry, and Cora Fry's Pillow Book (FSG, 1994). She lives in Chicago.

The two distinct voices of Jayne Atkinson and Lisagay Hamilton are a boon to this moving story of a mother-daughter relationship tested by time and by race. Now living in a white, upper-class suburb of Houston, Miriam Vener's life is radically changed when her estranged daughter--the product of an affair with a black professor nearly eighteen years earlier--reenters Miriam's life. Both narrators do a superlative job of fleshing out the characters' conflicts as they regain each other's trust while battling a boldly racist society. Each narrator brings to this rich text her own sense of moral urgency and painful loss. R.A.P. © AudioFile 2000, Portland, Maine-- Copyright © AudioFile, Portland, Maine