The House of Eve

Readers who love complicated stories about parallel lives will be absorbed by these stories of two women who ultimately share the same destiny. I loved this book because it took me into feeling like I knew these women intimately. They are sexual beings during a time when female sexuality was taboo. Because of these societal strictures, women are constrained from becoming their authentic selves. While both of their roads begin in poverty and deprivation, both share an unrelenting passion for doing fulfilling work and creating better circumstances. Both are willing to humble themselves in the face of circumstances and deal with reality as it presents itself in attempting to crush them into nonentity. Layered onto this story are the further humiliations of being black in a society that only values light skin and compliant blacks. The author is gifted in writing about daily humiliations which resonate throughout one’s life and choices. Ultimately, readers will feel the familiarity of feeling that these lives are real and that even under trying circumstances, achievement is possible.