Tempest Rising

by Diane McKinney-Whetstone Narrated by Susan Spain

Overview

Award-winning author of the national best-seller Tumbling, Diane McKinney-Whetstone is an immensely talented author of African American fiction. It is 1965 in Philadelphia and Clarise, Finch, and their three adolescent daughters are living a financially privileged life. But when Finch's business falls on hard times and Clarise suffers a mental breakdown, their idyllic world is shattered and their daughters are endangered.

Editorial Reviews

John Keene

McKinney-Whetstone does not simply tell a fine story but conjures a world, storms and all, between the covers.
— John Keene,The Washington Post

Kirkus Reviews

McKinney-Whetstone (Tumbling, 1996) scores big on mood and language, less on plot and character. A trio of Philadelphia-born sisters is the focus of this solid if uninspired second novel: Shern, Victoria, and Bliss are born to loving, well-meaning parents, but the forces of circumstance cause their lives to change drastically one day in 1965. Their mother, the light-skinned, lighthearted Clarise, and their father, the dark-skinned, dashing Finch, have a charmed marriageuntil Finch's catering business hits rocky waters, and dire financial need causes him to go out on a fateful crabbing trip. An inexperienced boater, he drowns in a sudden storm, thinking, as he dies, of Clarise and the girls. Clarise, in mourning, is prescribed Valium; no one knows that she's allergic to the drug, and so when she collapses it's assumed that she's attempted suicide by overdose and is having a breakdown caused by her husband's death. As a result, Clarise is institutionalized and the girls are assigned to foster care. They end up living with the hard-edged Mae, a gambler, and her neglected daughter Ramona, in a blue-collar neighborhood where everything is foreign to them. Although Mae is decent to Shern, Victoria, and Bliss, she has some serious problems of her own, and her abusive behavior toward Ramona strains credibility, even though Ramona herself is not the most lovable of characters. In fact, Ramona's interactions with her boyfriend and her boyfriend's father are among the more disturbing elements in the story. Meanwhile, Clarise survives her ordeal in the asylum, but when she gets out, she can't at first find her daughters. It takes time, persistence, and luck, but eventually the family isreunited, and even Mae and Ramona seem moved to try to rebuild their own relationship. A satisfying end makes up, somewhat, for a convoluted storyline. McKinney-Whetstone's material this time, though, is not nearly as strong as her voice.

San Francisco Chronicle

McKinney-Whetstone’s gifts as a writer continue to fascinate.

Product Details

BN ID:	2940169071160
Publisher:	Recorded Books, LLC
Publication date:	09/14/2012
Edition description:	Unabridged

Read an Excerpt

Clarise's aunt Ness wasn't the only one praying for their prosperity. Finch had moneymaking on his mind from the start of their holy matrimony. Clarise's type of beauty begged for mink and silk. But before he thought about such large-scale purchases, he knew he'd want to keep her in sheer, lacy nightgowns. He'd noticed right away after he'd carried her over the threshold of their honeymoon hotel on Kentucky Avenue in Atlantic City and she'd unpacked the quality tweed suitcase that belonged to the uncles, there was only the fancy nightgown. Lord have Mercy he thought she'll leave me for some other cat if I can't keep her in good lingerie. He could hardly concentrate on satisfying her appetites that night thinking about that nightgown. She'd teased him so, played peek aboo and hide-and-seek with her one nightgown before she'd let him poke his fingers thought the holed the lace made.

Finch just lay there staring at the ceiling that entire night while Clarise snored softly against his chest and lightly ground her teeth. Instead of counting sheep, Finch ticked off the mammoth hidden costs of having such a beautiful bride. In addition to nightgowns, there would be fine nylons, imported scents, luxurious skin creams, manicures, and pedicures, and even though he loved her hair when it went soft and bushy and looked like cotton candy, felt like it too when it bounced all up and down his chest to the rhythm of her body working his manhood like it had never been worked before, he knew she'd want to get that cotton candy hair pressed out on a regular basis and not at someone's kitchen table either; she warranted the finest, full service salons.

The list of expenses kept accumulating inFinch's head even until morning, when Clarise woke glowing and chattering about that delicious ocean breeze sifting through the screen in the Kentucky Avenue hotel.

"Come on, Finch, — she giggled — "let's hurry and swim in the ocean early before the beach gets crowded and people let their untrained children stir up the sand in our faces and pee in the ocean and scatter wax paper from their bologna and cheese sandwiches all over the shoreline."

Mercy Lord, he thought. He hadn't even gotten to children. Children would be a whole separate list. As it was already, he'd have to work night and day as a short order cook at the Seventeenth-Street Deweys. But he couldn't work night and day. Surely Clarise would get bored waiting for him to come home to play peekaboo games with her nightgown.

He was so plagued with thoughts of some prosperous cat showering his exotic beauty of a bride with see-through lacy lingerie that his steps lumbered heavier than usual as they walked to the beach. Clarise tickled him and tried to entice him into a game of tag; she slapped his butt, blew into his ear, called him honeybunch, and jumped up and down like a squirrel as they walked. Finch hardly grunted. "Got things on my mind, pretty baby," he said.

"But the sun is overhead, the ocean's in our sight, the day is young and so are we, Finch. What could possibly be so pressing on your mind?"

Before he could tell her that it was money, the type of money he'd need to treat her, to keep her, to do right by her as her man, a seagull released it's creamy droppings right on to Finch's hatless head. "What the fuck," he said as he patted his head and looked up, only to have the loose boweled gull go again and again and again, substantial plops, until Finch had to cover his head and run around in circles.

Clarise was laughing and really hopping now. "Oh, Finch, it's glorious, it's the most wonderful thing. I knew it! I knew it! I was right. Thank you Lord, I was so damned right."

"What the hell is so freaking wonderful about a nasty gull shitting on my head? Finch asked, wiping his forehead furiously, trying to keep the shit from his eyes.

"It's luck, silly fool." Clarise continued to laugh. "Bird shit, just a dripping on your head means prosperity. And look at you. You're covered in shit. We're going to be rich, rich, I tell you, Finch. Filthy rich. So rich we'll move to a huge, brick single heaven of a house. And that's what we'll call it, Finch. Heaven. We're on our way to Heaven, my wide-backed, flat-footed man." She wrapped her arms around his shoulders and kissed his face, even where the milky omen of their prosperity dripped and ran.

Copyright ) 1998 by Diane McKinney-Whetstone

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