Passing Love

This book surprised me.  It took me a few chapters to become interested, but once I was interested, I enjoyed the unfolding of the story.  This is the type of book that should be read in a cafe while sipping tea or coffee and, if you smoke, it would be appropriate to have a cigarette (not that I'm advocating smoking, just saying if you already do smoke go ahead and have one or two ciggies...then call the quit hotline after you finish reading the book).  The reason I say that a cigarette and coffee would go well with this book is that it takes place in Paris and Paris is definitely a place for coffee and cigarettes.

The chapters alternate between the jazz age in postwar Paris (late 1940s-1950s) and the present day.  During the postwar era the story focuses on Ruby Mae, a young woman filled with wanderlust, who has run off to Paris with a musician, both carrying aspirations of stardom and a desire to leave the Jim Crow South behind.  The present day chapters focus on Nicole-Marie Handy who has run off to Paris to keep a promise to a recently deceased friend.  Early on, during her trip, she finds a photo of her father in an antique shop and is determined to learn more about how it got there.  The two stories don't seem connected at the start of the novel, which I think contributed to my slow interest.  Once the stories started overlapping, though, I was very interested and voraciously read the rest of the book.

After finishing the book, I can honestly say I wouldn't change the way the author built up to the "twist" in the story. This is one of those stories in which the voyage was enjoyable.  As I've mentioned before, I'm a bit of a Francophile and really enjoy reading about Paris. I wish I read this prior to my trip, because this book had a lot of interesting information about "Black" Paris in the jazz age.  I really appreciate a book by an African-American author that tells a story we don't often see in African-American novels.  Our stories are so varied, but the works published can seem so limited in plot.  Complex family relationships as well as romantic relationships were explored in Passing Love without being crass or over-simplified. This was refreshing.