Sugar by Bernice L. McFadden

Geyla Queen wrote:

this book was off the hook...we read this one in my book club a year or 2 ago?

hey.. have to run off. be back

I'm told there will be a sequel...I hope so....great book...it had me from the 1st 3 word....The detail in the book was great....the characters has stuck in my mind for this long....I felt like I was in the book....if you ever get a hold of it...do read

(below) taken from amazon.com

This hauntingly beautiful tale of a "scarlet" woman and the small town without pity was an exercise in human nature. Sugar comes to Bigelow, a small African American town in Arkansas, in 1955 to live in a house next door to Pearl and Joe. Fifteen years earlier their daughter Jude was brutally murdered. There is something about Sugar that reminds Pearl of her beloved daughter and while the whole town shuns her, she befriends her. Sugar brings out the youth and makes Pearl laugh and enjoy life. Pearl has not laughed so much since before Jude died. Pearl, the virtuous wife and mother, pillar of the church has even taken to dying her hair and visiting the juke joints with Pearl and taken Joe with her. The town is horrified at Pearl taking up with Sugar and their back- biting curiosity turns to venom.
Sugar, abandoned, as a child and growing up around brothels just does what she know best, make men happy. She knows secrets about Bigelow that no one else knows. Sugar has never known love and when she meets Pearl's son she finds out what it is, alas, she is unable to accept it. A tragedy unfolds with devastating consequences that reveal the events of fifteen years prior.