Valerie Wilson Wesley Playing My Mother’s Blues

Playing My Mother's Blues

Valerie Wilson Wesley

Avon, Jun 2006, $12.95

ISBN: 0060890053

Impetuous Maria left her spouse Hilton Dells for Durell Alexander. However, when she walked out on Hilton and became Mariah, she also abandoned her daughters seven year old Dani Carter and seventeen year old Rose. However, several months after she deserted her family for a love affair, the hotheaded Mariah killed her lover. She spent time in jail for the homicide while Hilton's sister Lucille raised her nieces especially the "baby".

Maria reads an obit that Hilton just died. Whereas Dani overcame the betrayal, but remains curious about the woman she remembers filled with lan; Rose has always acted as if their mom died years ago. Now the death of Hilton has brought to the surface the one guilt that Maria has tried to bury, abandoning her children. She wants to reconcile with them. Dani needs to understand her mom as she finds herself following her mother's path being marred with children, but having an affair. Rose, raging with rancor, wants nothing to do with the woman whose leaving devastated her. Lucille wants her former sister-in-law to stay away from her nieces. These four women meet ostensibly to bury Hilton but to exhume the past.

The viewpoint constantly switches mostly between Mariah, Rose, and Dani, and to a much lesser degree Lucille so that the audience sees the same incident from dissimilar perspectives. For instance what seems like a molehill to Maria is Mt. Everest to Rose as each looks back to the late 1960s early 1970s differently. The fine character study enables the audience to understand how a pivotal event over two decades ago still fully impacts the players. Though at times the introspection can slow down the plot, fans will enjoy this family drama starring believable protagonists struggling to understand one another.

Harriet Klausner