About this item
Brings vividly to life the Georgetown neighborhood of Washington, DC, circa 1925, a community reeling from a young girl's tragic death.Five-year-old Clara Bynum is dead, drowned in the Potomac River in the shadow of a seemingly haunted rock outcropping known locally as the Three Sisters. River, Cross My Heart, which marks the debut of a wonderfully gifted new storyteller, weighs the effect of Clara's absence on the people she has left behind: her parents, Alice and Willie Bynum, torn between the old world of their rural North Carolina home and the new world of the city, to which they have moved in search of a better life for themselves and their children; the friends and relatives of the Bynum family in the Georgetown neighborhood they now call home; and, most especially, Clara's sister, ten-year-old Johnnie Mae, who must come to terms with the powerful and confused emotions stirred by her sister's death as she struggles to decide what kind of woman she will become.
About the Author
"Angels Make Their Hope Here", Breena Clarke's third novel, is set in a mixed-race community in New Jersey at mid-19th century. Breena Clarke's debut novel, "River, Cross My Heart", an 1999 Oprah Book Club selection, illuminated the vibrant African American community in the Georgetown neighborhood of Washington, D.C. Ms. Clarke, a Washington native, returned to Georgetown for the setting of her second novel, "Stand The Storm", a bittersweet, lyrical novel that delivers a passionate portrayal of the trials and hopes of the enslaved and newly freed in Civil War Washington. Breena Clarke lives in Jersey City, NJ.
