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 Baby Brother's Blues: A Novel by Pearl Cleage
My rating: 3 of 5 stars
Baby Bother’s Blues by Pearl Cleage is the third in the West End series. I have not read the second book in the series because when I picked up Some Things I Never Thought I Would Do, along with Baby Brother’s Blues, I did not know they were part of a series. When you love an authors’ work you tend to bypass the synopsis because you will read anything by them. Pearl Cleage is one of those authors for me.
Baby Brother’s Blues picks up two years after Some Things I Never Thought I Would Do ends. The West End series is about a neighborhood in Atlanta, Georgia, that is under the control of a modern day Robin Hood by the name of Blue Hamilton. The book opens with Blue and Regina, now married and expecting their first child. Little focus was placed on their relationship and at times their chapters seemed an afterthought. The highlight of Blue and Regina’s story was when a community activist informed Regina that he could not accept fundraising support from Blue because he was a Gangster. It was as if a light finally clicked in her head, that no matter how you sugar-coat vigilantism, these do-gooders are no better than the criminals whose evil they choose to rid from the world.
The major plot of this installment is a soldier home on leave from Iraq, and decides to desert the military. His ill-planned desertion leads him to Atlanta where his irrational behavior disrupts the West End community and tests a life-long friendship. The other sub-plots deal with corruption in the police department, young women stripping and prostituting as a way of life, unfair treatment of veterans returning to the States from Iraq and Afghanistan, brothers on the down-low, and the most perplexing, the return of Regina’s, Aunt Abbie…
Perhaps Cleage attempted to do too much with this book, which left this reader wanting her to focus on one storyline and fully develop it—even if she expected them all to culminate into one dramatic ending. It was too much and once again, everything fell into place too conveniently. At times I questioned if her approach to each topic is her personal views or if she was simply being politically correct, because she seemed pretty soft on such serious matters. Only one character actually suffered from the consequences of his actions, although he was the least likely to have received such a stiff punishment. Then again, in a society where one man is judge and jury, anything is possible.
Baby Brother’s Blues held my attention until the end, but I am done with this particular series. The first book asked me to accept a lot, but this installment pretty much confirms that you can only stretch the imagination so far. Even when controversial topics are placed in a setting where everything is accepted, one has to question if this is the perfect world we long for. Then again, one would have to remain on Blue Hamilton’s good side, to actually enjoy the experience. But the truth is, the reader shouldn’t long for the hero to meet his demise; and that’s exactly what I was hoping for by the time I turned the last page.
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Much Love,
Tracy
www.TracyLDarity.com View all my reviews
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