Kensington
March 2003
On Sale: March 3, 2003
Featuring: Dewey; Jonas; Ruth
352 pages ISBN: 1575668661 EAN: 9781575668666 Trade Size (reprint) Add to Wish List
Big-boned and notoriously sassy, Ruth Borum is nonetheless the organist and a member in good standing of Calhoun, Virginia's most prominent black church--or she was until she dragged the popular Reverend Jonas Borum into an ugly divorce. Having lost everything in the divorce--everything but weight, attitude and the fiendish desire to continue playing organ every Sunday next to her scowling ex--Ruth scrapes by on what she can make as a hairdresser. Alone at night in her apartment, she indulges in ice cream and argues with the Almighty. Did He have to take everything away? And when is He going to give something back? The Good Lord must have a sense of humor. That's the only conclusion Ruth can reach when He makes her fall head over heels in love ... with a white man. Ruth's never looked at a white man before, but if you're going to look, why not look at Dewey Baxter? A big guy--just Ruth's size--with solid farm-boy muscles and a handsome face, Dewey's even cuter when he's with Tee and Dee, his darling children. Something--maybe it's their copper, freckled skin, or the way traumatized Dee hasn't spoken since his mother's death, or it just might be the crazy breathless feeling Ruth gets every time she looks at Dewey--convinces her that she belongs with the Baxter family and they with her. But getting to Dewey, Tee and Dee is trickier than Ruth could have ever imagined. Her friends are appalled to see her chasing after a white man, and Antioch Baptist, her spiritual home since birth, is ready to throw her out on her ear. Even Dewey, attracted as he is to Ruth's spirit and womanly curves, isn't sure his exhausted heart can take on another complicated relationship. Still, with the help of jump rope rhymes, a homeless man who hear's God's voice in a Mason jar, and two children who want a Mama as much as she wants them, Ruth's determined to prove anything is possible ... even love between two people who couldn't be more mismatched.