Monica Schroeder's Page

Dear Book Lover:

On Jan 9th, 2010 my debut novel, SUGAR (Dutton/Penguin Publishers) will celebrate its 10th anniversary and in order to commemorate this milestone I am campaigning to sell 10,000 copies between now and that date.

“Bernice L. McFadden's first novel begins with the brief, poetic description of a crime so startling that the reader is helplessly drawn in, as if a bright red door stood ajar on a bleak and forbidding house. Pearl Taylor's daughter, Jude, has been found murdered and mutilated near a field at the edge of town. "The murder had white man written all over it," writes McFadden. "But no one would say it above a whisper. It was 1940. It was Bigelow, Arkansas. It was a black child. Need any more be said?" In the years that follow, Pearl catches sight of Jude in so many strangers that when Sugar Lacey comes to town and sets up her unwholesome "business" in the house next door, she doesn't know whether to believe what she sees in Sugar's face: a striking similarity to Jude, dead 15 years. In her sedate but supple prose--rising at times to a light, unforced lyricism in the description of landscape or character--the author perfectly renders the closed and protective society of a small Southern town, the superstitions, gossip, and prying.”

I’m asking that you purchase a copy of SUGAR for yourself, a friend or family member. And if you could help spread the word by blogging, twittering ad Face-booking my campaign, it would mean the world to me.


Peace & Light,

Bernice L. McFadden