Satin
Doll
by Karen E. Quinones Miller
Simon and Schuster
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved
Book Description
Bang! Being shot in the middle of the night and left for dead is what it took to open her eyes. Until that fateful moment, Regina Harris lived la vida loca with pimps and hustlers, a gangster lifestyle that supplied the money she needed to get high and forget the poverty of Harlem. Now she has turned her life around, is a college graduate and freelance journalist, and makes enough money to live on the Upper West Side and hob- nob with the city's movers and shakers. She's become the classy Satin Doll of the Duke Ellington song. But she can't forget where she came from: her three best friends are from the old neighborhood.
The Harlem homegirls. Regina tries to give emotional support to each of her friends as they deal with their own personal issues: Yvonne is a single mother looking for the right man. Tamika must raise two children alone while their father does time in jail for robbery. Puddin' lives her life by picking up men and smoking weed.
Living in two worlds; comfortable in neither. On a night out partying with her homegirls in Harlem, Regina meets aspiring lawyer Charles Whitfield, son of a pro-minent, upper-class black family in Philadelphia. He loves her but not her rough-around-the-edges friends. She loves him but doesn't think she can live up to his family's expectations.
Regina tries desperately to hide her former life, but when her past is revealed, it threatens to destroy her relationship with Charles and the life she has worked hard to create.
From its dramatic beginning to the fateful ending, Satin Doll is a witty and truthful take on relationships, friendships, and class distinctions.
From the Publisher
Not all successful middle-class African-American women were born successful middle-class African-American women. Some come from origins that might be considered marginal, or even downright criminal. Many are constantly looking over their shoulders -- worried that their shady pasts will eventually catch up with them.In her debut novel, Satin Doll, Philadelphia Inquirer reporter Karen E. Quinones Miller, tells the story of one such woman.
Glamorous and successful Regina Harris has a colorful history. Born and raised in Harlem, she was orphaned while a young teen and inherited the job of sole provider for an infant niece. She tried to get a legitimate job, but found no one interested in hiring a 13-year-old who said she was 18, and looked 11. Shes finally forced into a life of crime in order to survive.
But when shes shot, and almost killed, while hanging out with a cocaine dealer, Regina turns her life around. She goes away to school, graduates from college, and begins a successful journalism career.
But still, she cant quite get Harlem out of her blood, and she struggles to deal with two worlds -- feeling comfortable and alienated in both. She sips cocktails with the literary elite at Rockerfeller Center one night, and goes barhopping in Harlem with her homegirls the next.
While partying with them at a club one night Regina meets, Charles Whitfield, 26, a snobbish upper-middle class young man from Philadelphia, who stereotypes her and her friends as stupid, gold-digging street women. When Charles snobbishly insults them, sassy Regina haughtily puts him in his place. Hes shocked, but smitten, and they embark on high-powered love affair filled with sexual passion and intellectual one-upmanship. Shes not sure shell ever get along with his very class-conscious mother. He continues to have qualms about her close relationships with her Harlem girlfriends.
But when she and Charles and marry, and he makes a bid for the U. S. Congress, the couple are forced to come to grips that the unveiling of her past could be the undoing of them both. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
About the Author
Karen E. Quinones Miller is a staff writer at The Philadelphia Inquirer covering West Philadelphia.Born and raised in Harlem, Karen dropped out of school at the age of 13, and spent the majority of her teenage years experiencing street life first-hand. At age 22, Karen joined the Navy and realized for the first time that loansharking is not a legal business (although she still believes that loansharks perform a vital service) and that it is immoral to break someone's fingers if they cheat at poker.
After spending five years in the Navy, Karen married, had a child, and divorced -- all within a two-year period.
She moved to Philadelphia at age 29, and got a secretarial job with The Philadelphia Daily News but, after three years of complaining about media coverage of people living below the poverty level, she enrolled at Temple University and began work as a correspondent for The Philadelphia New Observer -- a weekly African American newspaper. Karen graduated magna cum laude from Temple with a B.A. in journalism, confirming her belief that the only thing she missed by skipping high school was the senior prom.
In 1994, Karen started her first permanent job at The Virginian-Pilot Norfolk, Va. Less than a year later she left to join the staff at The Philadelphia Inquirer. She has also worked as a correspondent for People Magazine.
Karen currently lives in Philadelphia with a cat that she despises, a dog that she has learned to tolerate, and her 12-year-old daughter, Camille, whom she worships.
Satin Doll is her first novel.
