Gut-wrenching. Moving. Heartfelt. Truth. Those are just a few words I'd use to describe Bernice McFadden's novel, Sugar. This year is the tenth anniversary of its publication and it's taken me all that time to finally read it. Once I finished, I stopped regretting not reading it sooner. I think I was supposed to read it now, where I am in my life. Only now can this story bring tears to the brink of spilling forth. Only now can I empathize with the title character, a prostitute, who begins to realize there is more for her in this world than a piece of a life. Sugar's story unfolds when she returns to Bigelow, Arkansas, a town near where she was born, to start over. But since she knows only one way of life, she falls easily back into it and much to the delight of most of the men and the chagrin of the women of the town. The women want her gone and she's a tough, defiant woman who, initially, can't be moved. She slowly develops a friendship with her neighbor Pearl who lost a daughter, who Sugar seems to bear quite a resemblance to, fifteen years earlier. While Sugar is learning secrets of her own past, the secrets of some of the other townsfolk are revealed who share a link to her. McFadden does an excellent job of exploring morality and judgment through a number of startling back stories involving some of the same women who gossip about Sugar. A real testament to the author's storytelling abilities is the nuanced friendship that blossoms between Pearl and Sugar that allows Pearl to truly begin healing from the loss of her daughter. The story reads like it will be one of redemption for the protagonist, but McFadden keeps it real and doesn't tie everything up nice and neat at the end. McFadden's writing is accessible and a bit haunting. It has a foreboding tone that didn't allow me to put my guard down. Sugar has a very open ending that I'll hopefully find resolution to in the follow-up, This Bitter Earth.

Challenges:
African Diaspora