Last Updated on September 20, 2002 by Paulette Brown-Hinds
Rachel Howzell Hall will be signing her new book A Quiet Storm in Los Angeles at Eso Won Books, 3655 S. LaBrea Avenue beginning at 7:00 p.m. on September 24th and at Barnes & Noble/Santa Monica, Third Street Promenade on September 26th beginning at 7:30 p.m.
Howzell Hall’s poignant debut novel A Quiet Storm (A Scribner Paperback Fiction Original/A Simon & Schuster Trade Paperback), details the importance of love and struggle within a middle-class African American family, as it examines the relationship between siblings and parents; and ultimately the anguish of a family pulled apart by secrets.
Smart, kind, and beautiful Rikki Moore was always the star of her middle-class well-bred African American family. Voted the “most likely to succeed” in school, winner of poetry contests and scholarships, the salutatorian of her high school class, she grows up to become a devoted school teacher, a sought-after guest at teas and parties, and a valuable asset to both her church and the greater Los Angeles community. Not only is Rikki the perfect woman, she marries the perfect man – pediatrician Matthew Dresden.
What the world doesn’t know is that storms ripple just beneath Rikki’s image of perfection. The teenage suicide attempt, the emotional breakdowns and the obsessive behaviors that have erupted periodically ever since Rikki was an adolescent are secrets kept by her younger sister, Stacy, the narrator of this extraordinary novel. When Matt disappears, however, the Moore family’s carefully constructed image begins to unravel. Rikki is the main suspect and Stacy realizes that everything her mother and her have kept quiet about Rikki is now surfacing, forcing the facade to crumble.
Howzell Hall is the assistant director of development for the American Civil Liberties Union of Southern California and has written articles for Black Radio Entertainment magazine and the entertainment website www.sneeker.com. She lives in Los Angeles with her husband
