In This Is How It Ends, I tell you what happens when a birth mother shows up nearly five years later to reclaim a child whom she relinquished at birth, but later refused to put up for formal adoption. The would-be adoptive family falls into disarray - alcoholism, domestic violence, and child sexual abuse. And the abyss is even deeper when the adoptive parents happen to be the brother and sister-in-law of the biological mother. When that's the case, the entire family spirals downward as relatives take sides. Those incidents root my story of family turmoil against the backdrop of social chaos. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. is assassinated. The Vietnam War is escalated. Alan B. Shepard walks on the moon, and Woodstock and the Stonewall riots rock New York. That story is cradled inside a bigger, more recent story: Why it was so difficult letting my would-be adoptive mother fly into heaven when she died thirty years later.

This is How it Ends is set on Chicago's South Side and is told mostly from the perspective of a young African American girl, especially early on. However, her adult voice is also present to provide closure when the child is unable to do so.

I hold an M.A. in writing, had an interview published in Pleiades and have been promoting This is How it Ends at readings, on my blog, and at various Web sites. I did readings initially to determine if I should continue writing it for publication.