Verwandte Artikel zu P.G. County

9780385501613: P.G. County
Hardcover
ISBN 10: 0385501617 ISBN 13: 9780385501613
Verlag: Doubleday, 2002

Inhaltsangabe

The best-selling author of Sisters and Lovers journeys to Prince George's County, Maryland, into the heart of an affluent African-American enclave to reveal the lives, fortunes, passions, trials, secrets, and scandals of its citizens. 75,000 first printing.

Die Inhaltsangabe kann sich auf eine andere Ausgabe dieses Titels beziehen.

Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

Connie Briscoe is the author of the New York Times bestsellers Sisters and Lovers and Big Girls Don’t Cry, and The Long Way Home. She is the former managing editor of the American Annals of the Deaf at Gallaudet University and has been hearing-impaired for most of her adult life. She lives in Falls Church, Virginia.

Aus dem Klappentext

Connie Briscoe s previous novels have won the accolades of critics, positions on national bestseller lists, and the loyalty of millions of fans. Essence magazine called Sisters and Lovers a frank and funny tale, and Mademoiselle dubbed it riveting ...lively...hilarious. The San Francisco Chronicle had high praise for Big Girls Don t Cry, declaring [It] brims with warmth, energy, and a positive message. With P.G. County, Briscoe serves up a sexy, lush, and irresistible portrait of an elite African American community in Maryland.

Now meet the women of P. G. County:

Barbara Bentley is fifty, rich, fabulous, and the wife of the powerful Bradford Bentley. She has more than enough trouble keeping track of her handsome but all-hands husband while keeping her drinking problem in check

Pearl is a hairdresser who lives on the outskirts of the tony Silver Lake with her grown son, Kenyatta. As Pearl strives to grow her business and recover from a bad divorce, she also has to deal with Kenyatta s new girlfriend, Ashley, who is not at all the match Pearl imagined for her son.

The married Jolene, the black-sheep daughter of a prominent judge, beds down more than one promising candidate as she pursues a wealthy and powerful replacement for her earnest and hardworking husband.

Candice Johnson is remarried, white, and liberal, at least she always fancied herself as such until her daughter enters into a serious relationship with a young black man, and Candice s life as she knows it is suddenly called into question.

Lee is a teenager on the run from her mother s abusive boyfriend and in search of her own father whom she believes to be handsome, rich,and all-powerful.

In Connie Briscoe s big new splashy novel, five lives intersect in the swish and swanky, rich and raucous Prince George s County. With more than a nod to Peyton Place, Connie Briscoe has created a fabulously fun novel that will delight, excite, and entertain.

Auszug. © Genehmigter Nachdruck. Alle Rechte vorbehalten.

1

Barbara Bentley was sweating profusely and it wasn't the shakes this time. She hadn't had a drink in years. This time it was that philandering husband of hers, Bradford Bentley III, slipping out of bed at the crack of dawn to run to his mistress. Honestly. The man had no shame when it came to his uncontrollable sexual urges.

She listened to him moving around in the bathroom--the toilet flushing, water running--and fumed under the bedcovers. Only seconds ago, she'd been tucked contentedly between her Egyptian cotton sheets, dreaming of the exquisite preparations for her daughter's upcoming wedding--of Beluga caviar and smoked salmon, of starched white tablecloths and lilacs and lilies. Then came the familiar bed tremor as her husband jolted her awake.

But she didn't utter a word. She had long since learned not to question the man who slept next to her each night about these things, unless she wanted to be thoroughly dressed down. And lied to. He'd give her his 'how dare you question me' look and tell her to quit whining. He was only going to play golf, to hang out with his buddies for a few hours, and hadn't he given her everything a woman could possibly want? They had a big beautiful house, a condo at Wintergreen ski resort and another in Nassau, a Jaguar and two Benzes in the driveway, a forty foot boat sitting on the Potomac, and country club membership.

But at fifty years of age, she now knew better than to be deceived by his sly diversions. She wasn't some wide-eyed young bride anymore, and he wasn't running off to hit any balls into little holes in green grass. No indeed. He was off to put his little pecker into a certain brown hole down the block.

She threw the bedcovers off. She needed to cool down. Normally she would shrug it off, he'd done this for so long. But this was their daughter's wedding day. Didn't the man have even a shred of decency? Of propriety? Sympathy? Even for his daughter?

The bathroom door opened, and she lay there with her back turned away from him and fumed as she mentally ticked of the myriad tasks she had to complete--without benefit of her husband's help--before the guests arrived at their home that afternoon for the reception. She had a wedding planner to help out, of course, but Barbara trusted no one to completely handle this very important affair.

Only after she heard the bedroom door shut and her husband's footsteps on the stairs did she yank the silken mask from her eyes. Then she swung her feet over the edge of the bed and reached for the pack of Benson & Hedges sitting on her night stand.

"Men," she hissed under her breath as she lit up. Her husband was fifty-six years old. She wished he'd grow up and act it. She took a deep puff, then blew it out.

She went to the window, pulled the drapes open and looked out over the estate. It was a perfect June day with a beautiful blue sky. The edges of the white tent that had been erected on the lawn the previous day blew gently in the breeze. At least the weather was cooperating.

She glanced at the clock on the wall and decided to let Rebecca sleep a little longer. The wedding didn't start until two, and the future bride had probably been up late last night talking on the phone to her fiance. She needed her beauty rest for this special day.

Barbara had to admit to herself that she preferred it when Bradford wasn't around. As long as he handed over the green stuff whenever she needed it, she could get along just fine, thank you. Although lately he had started to nag her about how much the wedding was costing them. How much was this? And why do we need that?

Honestly, what did he expect? A proper wedding with three hundred guests took money, piles of it. As he often reminded her, they were the Bentleys of Silver Lake, one of the finest families in one of Prince George's County's grandest neighborhoods. He was founder and president of a multimillion dollar technology company, one of the most successful black-owned firms in the area, hell, in the United States of America. To quote him, they had worked long and hard to get all that they had. They had an image to uphold. Well, Mister Big Shot ought to know that they couldn't get away with a two-bit piddling wedding for their daughter.

The day Bradford struck it rich fifteen years ago when he landed that twenty-million-dollar software development contract, she'd promised herself that their two daughters would always have the finest of everything. Private schools, music lessons, beautiful dresses. And on their wedding days they would get a lot more than something like the little rinky-dink cafeteria-style reception in the church hall that she and Bradford had down in Smithfield, Virginia. That was all her aunt could afford for her, but now Barbara could afford the world for her daughters. And they would have it.

When she was twelve, her daddy took off for good--flat out disappeared. Her mother tried hard to raise her only child on her own. But it was tough for a single black woman in rural Virginia back in the 1960s. Her mother lost job after job, and pretty soon she took to drinking and welfare. Within a couple years after her daddy left, they lost the house, then the car, and Barbara became the poorest girl in school. 'Barbara the bag lady,' they called her, as her dresses became more tattered by the day.

You so po', yo' mama make you wish sandwiches for lunch, two slices of bread and wish you had some meat.

Ha, ha, ha.

Where your daddy, bastard child?

That was how she learned her parents were never married. And in the sixties it was still something to be ashamed of, especially in Smithfield, Virginia.

Barbara came home from school on her fifteenth birthday, walked into their tiny one-bedroom apartment, and found her mama dead on the couch. An empty bottle of Boone's Farm lay nearby on the floor.

Her mother's sister whisked her off, and her living standards jumped up a notch or two. But Aunt Gladys took every chance she got to trash Barbara's "no-good daddy." Aunt Gladys's favorite saying was "most men are dogs, the rest are boring as hell." Aunt Gladys's husband mostly sat in the living room watching t.v. when he came home from work. He was considered one of the boring ones.

Aunt Gladys thought Bradford was one of the dogs, and she was dead set against their marriage. She suspected that beneath all the Southern charm oozing from the pores of Bradford Bentley III was a cold and distant man. Barbara had long since come to realize that her aunt's sentiments about Bradford weren't entirely untrue. He was a dog at times.

But he could also be kind and generous with her and the girls. He rarely denied them anything. And she and Bradford had a lot more in common than many people realized. Everyone seemed to think that Bradford came from a prestigious Southern family, that he was born into money because he was so polished and charming. But he was from Smithfield, and his folks were pure country just like hers.

His parents had stayed together, and that made Bradford's life a little easier. And instead of fleeing as her daddy had, Bradford's dad stayed in Smithfield. But he worked in the factories all his life and died penniless and mad at the world. To this very day, Bradford's mother still lived in the same house with one of Bradford's sisters.

Bradford rarely visited them or talked about them. He seemed to have this need to run as far and fast as he could from his humble beginnings, and he had done a good job of leaving all signs of his past behind. They both had. Although she still visited her aunt regularly, she didn't keep in touch with anyone else from Smithfield.

If those snotty-nosed country kids down there could see her now, in her fine stone-and-stucco, Spanish-tile roof, seven-bedroom, eight-bathroom house, they'd...

„Über diesen Titel“ kann sich auf eine andere Ausgabe dieses Titels beziehen.

Verlag
Doubleday
Erscheinungsdatum
2002
Sprache
Englisch
ISBN 10 
0385501617
ISBN 13 
9780385501613
Einband
Gebundene Ausgabe
Anzahl der Seiten
324
Kontakt zum Hersteller
Nicht verfügbar
Verantwortliche Person
Nicht verfügbar