Rhythms [Paperback]

Three generations of dreamers face struggles in the rhythms of the Delta and the city.

Cora.. gifted singer raised in church and encouraged to dream by her father, the preacher. She sets off to realize these dreams and is confronted with ugliness and her darkest hour.

Emma.. she's labeled an outsider. Her disdain for her mother and her differences cause her to see an unusual way out of the Delta. She is confronted by her past and her true self.

Parris.. the "last chance to make it right." A musical prodigy and strong woman, made so by the morals engrained in her while growing up in the Delta. She is confronted by the ghosts of her predecessors.

Donna Hill has put together a fine novel, her growth as a writer apparent and almost blinding.

Have you ever read a book that reached out and told you...

"This is the book I've been waiting for" ...?

In a nutshell, this is what Rhythms told me.

Cora Harvey is one of those women. I found myself wanting to slap some sense into her `country bumpkin behind' for many a thing - how she treated her daughter, lied to her husband and kept so harsh secrets.
Rhythms is a skillfully written sonata of three women - Cora, her biracial daughter, Emma, and granddaughter, Parris by romance diva Donna Hill. Hill writes of these women's troubled lives and dark secrets: secrets common to most of our Southern heritages.
It made me wonder just how many women are living the Imitation of Life lie. (If you haven't seen that movie, you need to. It is a classic!) Emma is the incarnation of Sarah Jane in Imitation of Life. Sarah Jane is so light she can "pass for white" and that's the life she chooses despite warnings from her mother and getting beat up by her "white boyfriend." The difference between Sarah Jane and Emma is that Emma's father really is white; Sarah Jane's father was a fair-skinned Black man.
Emma was Cora's heartache; reminder of her damaged person and unfulfilled life. She'd gone to Chicago to make it big singing. What she found was fun and frivolity, number running and gangsters. Cora hangs her head and goes back to Rudell, Mississippi pregnant by the one man she'd grown to respect and whom she thought respected her.
Emma's childhood isn't a pleasant one because of the shame Cora must endure after her birth. Emma discovers a key to some unanswered questions when she intercepts a letter from the woman Cora lived with in Chicago. Emma sets out to right the wrong she'd faced all her life - having her mother look at her with emptiness. After the confrontation, Emma chooses to live life as a white woman and seeks healing in the arms of her Italian husband. Then came along her "little brown baby girl" and more lies.
Parris's arrival helps Cora regain the strength and fire she exhibits early in the book. She devotes her life to the child and is able to reclaim her first love via telling him the truth about Emma. Parris, unlike her mother, is able to live a wholesome life filled with Cora's love and devotion. She goes off to college and finds work in New York; she finds a little more when she decides to work her gift - the voice she inherited from Cora in a nightclub. The rest is of the story is hair raising and tearful.
Speaking of beautiful voices. There is a CD compilation that accompanies Rhythms featuring Hill's daughter. Fab-u-lous!

Donna Hill has done an outstanding job with this novel. She takes you though three generations of women, all striving to obtain their dreams. The story begins in Rudell, MS then branches out to Chicago and NY. Secrets form and the characters try desperately to hold their lives together. You are reminded that not all that glitters is gold, the grass isn't always greener on the other side, and you can't judge a book by it's cover.

The characters experience love, loss, disappointment, betrayal, and love refound. Donna Hill has a special talent which allows her to write in such a way that transports you into the story along with the characters. While reading Rhythms, I laughed and cried - felt joy and sorrow.

I applaud Donna Hill for bringing this liteary work of art to the reading world!