The Warmest December
Critical Praise for
Glorious
by Bernice L. McFadden
• Finalist for the NAACP Image Award for Fiction
• Winner of the BCALA Literary Award for Fiction
• Debut selection of the One Book, One Harlem program
“McFadden’s lively and loving rendering of New York hews closely to the jazz-inflected city of myth … McFadden has a wonderful ear for dialogue, and her entertaining prose equally accommodates humor and pathos.”
—New York Times Book Review
“She brings Harlem to astounding life … Easter’s hope for love to overthrow hate … cogently stands for America’s potential, and McFadden’s novel is a triumphant portrayal of the ongoing quest.”
—Publishers Weekly
“Bernice L. McFadden’s novel
Glorious
, which starts with a bang-up prologue, has a strong main character (based in part on Zora Neale Hurston), hard-driving prose, and historic sweep of several decades, including the years of the Harlem Renaissance, which has always fascinated me.”
—Jane Ciabattari, National Book Critics Circle President
“The book is sweeping in scope and brings to life the tenuous existence of an African American artist in the early twentieth century.”
—Vogue
“I hadn’t read a word of hers before [
Glorious
], but I will follow her from now on.”
—Alan Cheuse, NPR
“The novel is so intense and sweeping at the same time. Some of the scenes were terrifying, and some were very comic in the irony of what the narrator was experiencing and what she was actually thinking. The word for a journey like this is picaresque, but the ever-impending tragedy makes that word not quite right for this book.”
—Susan Straight, author of
A Million Nightingales
“A wonderful, rich read full of passion, history, wonder, and women you will recognize:
Glorious
is just that.”
—Jill Nelson, author of
Volunteer Slavery
and
Let’s Get It On
“The seeming inevitability of cruel fate juxtaposes the triumph of the spirit in this remarkably rich and powerful novel. Bernice L. McFadden’s fully realized characters are complicated, imperfect beings, but if ever a character were worthy of love and honor, it is her Easter Bartlett. This very American story is fascinating; it is also heartbreaking, thought-provoking, and beautifully written.”
—Binnie Kirshenbaum, author of
The Scenic Route
“A vivid and historical look at the Jim Crow South.”
—Everything Alabama
“McFadden’s descriptions are sometimes wrenching, sometimes heartwarming, sometimes gritty, but always evoke emotion.”
—Books, Personally
“This is a book that is difficult to put down. Easter Bartlett is a character who reaches out to you from the first page and who you never want to let go of.”
—Curled Up With a Good Book and a Cup of Tea
“Bernice McFadden broke and healed my heart in 235 pages.”
—BrownGirl Speaks
“McFadden does an expert job weaving fact and fiction … Her prose is straight-forward and honest, sometimes brutally so, underscoring the hardships Easter and blacks in general endured due to racism.”
—
Diary of an Eccentric
“
Glorious
is a novel that should be read, pondered, read again and discussed.”
—
Rundpinne
“
Glorious
is great writing, a powerful story, and in the hands of Bernice McFadden, haunting.”
—
Chick with Books
“With writing as rich and vivid as only she can do it, Ms. McFadden draws you into the life of Easter Bartlett and doesn’t release you easily.”
—Reads4Pleasure
This is a work of fiction. All names, characters, places, and incidents are the product of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to real events or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
Published by Akashic Books
Originally published in hardcover by Dutton in 2001; followed by a
trade paperback edition from Plume in 2002
©2001, 2012 Bernice L. McFadden
Introduction ©2012 James Frey
eISBN-13: 978-1-61775-111-0
Print ISBN-13: 978-1-61775-035-9
Library of Congress Control Number: 2011923102
All rights reserved
First Akashic Books printing
Akashic Books
PO Box 1456
New York, NY 10009
[email protected]
www.akashicbooks.com
Also by Bernice L. McFadden
Gathering of Waters
Glorious
Nowhere Is a Place
Camilla’s Roses
Loving Donovan
This Bitter Earth
Sugar
For me,
those daughters,
and their fathers
… And every time I see him put the bottle to his mouth
he don’t suck out of it, it sucks out of him …
—Ken Kesey,
One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest
Contents
BY
J
AMES
F
REY
I
met Bernice L. McFadden at a spelling bee. It’s a charity spelling bee where a group of well-known writers sit on a stage and pretend we’re in sixth grade again, and a crowd of people laugh at how poorly most of us spell without our computers. Although I do it every year, I don’t really enjoy it. I’m not friends with any of the other writers, and I always get knocked out in the first round. I show up, say hello to the organizers, misspell a word I should know, I leave.
This past year, though, it was a bit different. Shortly after I arrived, a beautiful African American woman walked up to me, a huge smile on her face, and said hello. She was smart, funny, warm, radiated kindness and serenity. We chatted for a few minutes and exchanged e-mail addresses. The bee started and I got knocked out in the third round. Bernice lasted longer.
She and I stayed in touch. We became Facebook friends. I had not read any of her work, so I did, starting with
Sugar
, moving to its sequel
This Bitter Earth
, and finishing with her masterpiece
The Warmest December
. She’s an amazing writer. Her work can be brutal and heartbreaking, but is full of heart and emotion. Stories of family and love, violence and abuse, struggle and redemption. All of it is filled with a spirit of grace and forgiveness. In many ways it was easy to connect the work to the woman I had met and who became my friend. In other ways it led to questions.
We live in a peculiar time in the publishing industry. Publishers are obsessed with categories, and being able to place things within them, usually for marketing reasons. The categories themselves—fiction, nonfiction, memoir, etc.— tend to pigeonhole books, many of which defy them, and impose rules on them which might not have been part of their creation. People read memoirs and nonfiction and ask questions about what in the books isn’t real. They read novels and short fiction and ask what in them is. Ultimately, none of it matters. Good writing is good writing, and a story well told isn’t beholden to issues of fact and fiction, and moves beyond wherever it is shelved in a bookstore. Any author, and every author, regardless of how their book is categorized, draws from their own life and their own experience in shaping their narrative. Writing a book is an act of subjectivity, and this subjectivity is what separates literature from journalism or academic writing. It is also what makes readers love certain authors. They connect, for whatever reason, with the author’s perspective, believe in it, learn from it, grow and change because of it. It is why, in this age of digitalization, writing will survive. No other medium does this in the same way.
In reading Bernice’s work, particularly
The Warmest December
, which, unlike her other two books that I’ve read, is set in contemporary times, I wondered how much of it came from her actual life. On her own website, there is banner across the top that says,
I write to breathe life back into memory
. The book tells the story of a woman named Kenzie sitting at her father’s bedside as he slowly dies. She relives, through memory, the horrific childhood she experienced at his hands, a childhood marred by alcoholism and extreme physical abuse. The narrative moves back forth between Kenzie’s memories and her present life, one in which she has survived, but is struggling with, her addiction to alcohol. It is a beautiful book, and my words about it don’t do it justice.
What I can do, though, is think about how it was written, how it came to be, how Bernice L. McFadden was able to give her readers the gift of
The Warmest December
. There are certain emotions, deep, profound, often brutal and sometimes beautiful, that can only be written about if the writer has actually lived through them. This is what I suspect the case is with Bernice. She goes so deep, and it feels so real, that it just couldn’t have been done if she hadn’t lived some version of it. Names have probably been changed, maybe settings, certain details to either enhance the narrative or protect someone’s identity, but art can’t be created in a vacuum, and a book like hers can’t be written without the years required to build it, make it great, and bring it to life.
I hope you love the book as much as I did, and I hope it moves you as much as it did me, changes you as it did me. I am fortunate to have access to the great woman who wrote it, which has only bolstered my belief that it comes from her direct experiences. Certain people glow. They glow because they have survived things most of us could never have imagined living through. They glow because hardship gives them the gift of wisdom, and kindness, and grace. They glow because they’ve figured out how to take those experiences, as horrific as they may have been, and turn them into something beautiful.
James Frey is originally from Cleveland. He is the
New York Times
best-selling author of
A Million Little Pieces, My Friend Leonard, Bright Shiny Morning,
and
The Final Testament of the Holy Bible.
His work is published in thirty-nine languages.
N
ow and then I forget things, small things that would not otherwise alter my life. Things like milk in my coffee, setting my alarm clock, or Oprah at four. Tiny things.
One day last week I forgot that I hated my father, forgot that I had even thought of him as a monster, forgot the blows he’d dealt my body over the years and the time he called me to him and demanded that I show him my hands. “Are they clean?” he asked as I slowly raised my arms. “Yes, sir,” I said and shook my head furiously up and down.