Alice Randall Libri

"In the black-owned-and-operated Kirkwood Hospital, Joseph 'Ziggy' Johnson reflects on his life. From the Great Depression through the post-World War II years, Ziggy had been the pulse of Detroit's famous Black Bottom. A celebrated gossip columnist for the city's African-American newspaper, the Michigan Chronicle, he was also the emcee of one of the hottest night clubs, where he rubbed elbows with the legendary black artists of the era. In his hospital bed, Ziggy curates his own list of Black Bottom's venerable '52 Saints', local heroes whose unstoppable ambition, love of style, and faith in community made this black Midwestern neighborhood the rival of New York City's Harlem"-- Provided by publisher

Windsor Armstrong grapples with her son Pushkin X's choices as he embraces fame in football and plans to marry a Russian lap dancer, which she views as a betrayal of the values she instilled in him. A former unwed teen mother who overcame her troubled Detroit past to attend Harvard, Windsor is torn between her outrage and unwavering love for Pushkin. As she confronts the reality of his decisions, she contemplates revealing a long-held secret about his father, hoping to guide him back to the path she envisioned for him.

Ada Howard, the wife of the preacher at Nashville's Full Love Baptist Tabernacle, has a whole lot of people to take care of. There's her husband, of course, and the flock that comes with him, plus the kids at the day care centre where she works, two grown daughters, and two ailing, wayward parents. It's no wonder she can't find time to take care of herself. And her husband's been so busy lately she's suspicious some other woman may be taking care of him...Then it comes: the announcement of her twenty-five-year college reunion in twelve months' time, signed with a wink by her old campus flame. It sets Ada thinking about the thrills of young love lost, and the hundred or so pounds gained since her college days, and she decides it's high time to change her body, and her life. So she starts laying down some rules. The first rule is: Don't Keep Doing What You've Always Been Doing. And so begins her unforgettable journey on the way to less weight and more love...For anyone who has ever found themselves at a crossroads, with one hand in their pocket and the other in the cookie jar, Ada's Rules is a warm, funny and soulfully wise novel about falling back in love with the life you have.

In an inspired act of literary invention, Alice Randall supplies the story that has been missing from Margaret Mitchell's Gone With the Wind. Imagine that the black characters in Mitchell's tale were other than one-dimensional stereotypes, and that Scarlett OUHara had an illegitimate mulatto sister, and that this sister gets to tell her story.