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To Do Justice

by Frank S Joseph

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GENRE:   Historical Fiction

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BOOK BLURB:

It’s 1965, summer in Chicago, and it’s hot. Pinkie looks white but is being ‘raised Black’ by shiftless Jolene -- who’s in it for Pinkie’s child support check and nothing more. But how did Jolene come to be raising Pinkie anyway? Join this daughter of the city’s meanest streets as she sets out on a quest to find the White woman who gave her birth, braving the inner-city riots of the turbulent ‘60s to discover who she really is. An IndieReader Best Book; finalist for Chicago Writers Assn. Book of the Year and First Prize, CWA novel contest; 5 Stars from Reedsy Reviews, Readers’ Favorite and Midwest Book Review.

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EXCERPT THREE:

Cop, he’s one of them greaseball Italians that run things around here. Do their business in them social clubs and ice cream parlors over to Taylor Street and Racine. Walk around smoking cheap cigars and acting like they own it all. I hear the Irish and the Polish got the cop racket sewed up in other parts of town but around here it’s the dagoes. Doubt if the colored be in charge in any part of town. … 

Cop turns from Bettina and smiles down. Seen all kind of cops in my life—angry cops, tricky cops, cops that act friendly till they get what they want. Think this one be the last kind.

I ask what he’s looking after. Says there’s been complaints about the hydrant so he ordering it closed.

“It’s a hundred degrees out Mister.”

Cop don’t care. Says it’s against city law to open a hydrant. Says what if there’s a fire on the block, you leave the hydrant running ain’t going to be enough pressure to fight the fire. Says anyhow the fire marshal wants it closed so he done called in a fire truck. Going to close it whether you kids like it or not.

Cop asks who opened it in the first place. I wouldn’t tell and get someone in trouble even if I knew though I surely don’t. I say we’re just kids trying to stay cool on a hot day. Cop says baloney, he knows how things work, everyone on this street knows everyone else so tell who opened it if you know what’s good for you. Gives us one of them cop looks. Bettina she’s scared but I know better. He’s just a wop in a cop suit, throwing his weight around.

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GUEST POST:

My Favorite Scene in This Book

This is the one for me.

My favorite scene in this book is … well, I have lots of favorite scenes. ‘I love all my children,’ y’know? But if I have to single out one scene, I choose the very opening of the novel. The voice is that of my 11-year-old heroine Pinkie, a mixed-race child of Chicago’s mean streets; the time summer 1965, riot season … thus the last line of the following:

Ever since I’m little I be wondering who my momma is.

It ain’t Jolene. Jolene been raising me but I ain’t her blood. Reminds me of it every chance she gets. Picked me out of a trash pile one day, that’s what Jolene says. Like a maggot out of a garbage can.

If I’m trash I say, why you done it? Just teasing she says, you be worth real money, check for $102.80 on the first of every month. Calls it her Pinkie check. Long as the Welfare keeps sending the Pinkie check, that’s all she cares about, Jolene.

Jolene just laughs when I ask about my real momma. One day I be finding her though. See does Jolene laugh when that day comes.

Jolene don’t treat Bettina no better than me even though Bettina be blood and flesh to her. Bettina asks who her poppa was but Jolene pretends she don’t hear. Poor little thing, Bettina, bumping into things like she does. Jolene says Bettina was born with a caul, that’s why she so clumsy. I know better though. Bettina can’t help it. Something wrong inside her head. She plenty smart all right, just something inside there don’t work how it’s supposed to, like a doorbell is busted or a toaster don’t pop.

All Jolene cares about is the money though, $102.80 a month for me and $94.73 for Bettina. And Bettina’ll be worth more soon Jolene says, worth as much as you gal, $102.80 a month when she turns nine. Then in September when you turn twelve, you’ll be worth $106.35, and Jolene grins.

No wonder Jolene gets so happy when she talks about the money. We’re her most valuable property. That’s why I got to protect my baby sister best I can. Bettina’s my most valuable property. Till I find my real momma, Bettina’s the closest thing to kinfolk I got in the world.

Should’ve protected Bettina better than I did though, the day things got turned upside-down.

* * *

These lines came to me as I sat in a hotel room on Chicago’s north side, stranded for four unplanned days by a freak storm that knocked out the airports. I hadn’t envisioned the character Pinkie previously. She wasn’t based on someone I knew*. She just manifested – came down from Somewhere Above and started talking. All I had to do was write it down.

*As I got to know Pinkie, I came to realize she was inspired somewhat by my daughter, who was someone else’s daughter before she became ours. When she was Pinkie’s age, she was in a bad situation – bad neighborhood, bad boyfriend, bad everything. But I wasn’t consciously thinking about my daughter when Pinkie was introducing herself.

Another of my protagonists came to me this way too. His name is Jesse Owens Trimble but I nickname him Sass because of his smart mouth. Sass is a presence in To Do Justice, Book #3 of my “Chicago Trilogy,” but a protagonist of Book #1, To Love Mercy; and Book #2, To Do Justice. Like Pinkie, Sass too is a street kid with no real-life counterpart. And as with Pinkie, Sass just came down from Up There and started talking.

Many other Trilogy characters are based on people I’ve known. I’ll single out one, the character I call Dora Barfield. She’s an elderly Black woman from Sunflower, Mississippi, with no more than a second-grade education … but far more than her share of folk smarts and wisdom.

There was a real-life Dora – Dora Winfield – who shared this story. Dora Winfield worked for my (White) family as a housekeeper – though, in those far-off politically incorrect times, we called them maids.

Even though the real-life Dora had been in our lives from the time I was 6 through my early teens, I hadn’t thought of her in some 40 years. As I started writing the trilogy, though, she popped into my head same as Pinkie and Sass -- talking.

Talking about her life as our domestic, sleeping a night or two every week on a rollaway bed in the dining room of our South Side apartment. About being there with the milk and cookies when my sister Judy and I would come home from school.

About … my mother.

Listening to my mom give her instructions. Thinking her own thoughts about it. And me, the author, now well into mid life, hearing for the first time these very private musings.

Each Trilogy novel has won awards – lots of them. To Do Justice, the one just published, has been named a Best Book by IndieReader. It’s a finalist for Book of the Year from the Chicago Writers Assn., and also won first prize in CWA’s novel contest. It’s garnered five-star reviews from Reedsy Reviews, Readers’ Favorite® and Midwest Book Review.

All credit to the voices inside my head. I couldn’t have done it without them.

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AUTHOR BIO:

Frank S Joseph's “Chicago Trilogy” novels -- TO LOVE MERCY, TO WALK HUMBLY and TO DO JUSTICE -- tell a story of lives forever changed by racial turmoil that marked and marred Chicago at mid century, a great city going up in flames.

Frank lived it. He came of age in the ’40s and ’50s as a sheltered White boy in comfortable South Side neighborhoods undergoing racial turnover and “white flight." And in his 20s, as an Associated Press correspondent, he covered the ’60s riots that wracked Chicago’s inner city as well as the '67 Detroit riot, where 37 died, and the notorious '68 Democratic National Convention street disorders. 

Frank left Chicago in 1969, landed at The Washington Post during Watergate, and went on to a career as an award-winning journalist, publisher and direct marketer. His Chicago Trilogy novels all have won award after award, most recently TO DO JUSTICE winning the Chicago Writers Assn. novel contest and being named an IndieReader Best Book. 

TO DO JUSTICE, Trilogy Book III, is out from Key Literary. TO LOVE MERCY, Trilogy Book I, and TO WALK HUMBLY, Trilogy Book II, are forthcoming from Key Literary. TO LOVE MERCY was previously published in 2006 by Mid Atlantic Highlands.

Frank and his wife Carol Jason, an artist and sculptor, live in Chevy Chase MD. They are the parents of Sam and Shawn.

An IndieReader Best Book

First Prize, Chicago Writers Assn. Novel Contest

Finalist, Chicago Writers Assn. Book of the Year

A Readers' Favorite® Five Star Selection

Five Stars -- Reedsy Reviews

Midwest Book Review - 5 Stars

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CONNECT WITH FRANK:

Website:

https://frankjoseph.com

Facebook:

https://www.facebook.com/p/Frank-S-Joseph-Author-100069277722721

Instagram:

https://www.instagram.com/frank_s_joseph_author

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GIVEAWAY:

Frank will be awarding a $20 Amazon OR Barnes and Noble Gift Card (Winner's Choice!!!) to a randomly drawn winner via Rafflecopter during the tour.

 

a Rafflecopter giveaway