IN THE ARMS OF ONE WHO LOVES ME

Ostensibly about two young African-Americans trying to make it in Manhattan in the early 1980s, LaMon's debut reads more like a paranoid rant, the kind of self-indulgent screed that climaxes with a poetry contest. Nia Benson's universe teeters when she is fired from her job to make way for her boss's niece, and her boyfriend leaves her for another woman. Meanwhile, Seth Jackson, a self-confessed lothario hoping to succeed in the music business, falls for Lauren, a woman with a ton of baggage. Both Nia and Seth have affairs with other people, who are mere stepping stones along the learning path that leads them to each other. An overreliance on melodrama combined with unwieldy subplots—lawsuits, lesbian affairs, bribery—add up to poor storytelling, as secondary characters are used to soapbox shamelessly. The need to learn not to compromise, to love oneself and to be honest are trumpeted, but much of the Black Power speechifying, while legitimate, simply sounds clumsy and dated in LaMon's hands. She fares better when she focuses more on romance than rhetoric, but even then her all-tell-and-no-show prose gets in the way: "days like these made a woman inhale and feel energy literally expand within her soul." The favoring of oration over narration makes this a windy, dissatisfying effort. 3-city author tour. (July)