Harlem Girl Lost
Treasure E. Blue, . . Ballantine/One World, $12.95 (332pp) ISBN 978-0-345-49264-7
This lurid urban soap opera—which sold 65,000 copies when originally self-published by the author, a Bronx fire inspector—follows Silver Jones as she flees Harlem, with its loose women of the night and seductive, heroin-shooting men, for Spelman College, where she dreams of becoming a doctor. Blue's wide cast is often villainous, paper thin and brimming with crack-smokers and sex-peddlers: there's Silver's confidant, Auntie Birdie, a "nearly 7 foot when he wears his stilettos" transvestite hooker who falls for men with roving eyes; Jesse, Silver's "junkie whore" of a mother whose inspirational aphorisms shape Silver's life; Chance, Silver's longtime, drug-dealing love who doesn't know how to dance; and a serial killer who drains his prostitute victims' blood and dresses each in a wedding gown before having sex with their bodies. The episodic story line, which has echoes of another successful lost-girl saga,
Reviewed on: 06/05/2006
Genre: Fiction
Open Ebook - 182 pages - 978-0-307-49581-5
Paperback - 978-0-9755974-0-8