Singing in the Comeback Choir

Maxine McCoy has made it. She has overcome the odds she faced as a black woman from a working-class Philadelphia neighborhood to become a successful television producer in Los Angeles. She loves her hardworking, ambitious husband and is pregnant with her first child. She does worry, though, that the shows she produces are of no social value. But even this concern drops away when she receives a phone call from the caretaker of her seventy-year-old grandmother and learns she has to return to Philadelphia. Orphaned at an early age, Maxine grew up with her grandmother Lindy, a singing star. Lindy is now a smoking, drinking, embittered women whose glorious voice has atrophied from disuse, and the house that used to swing with laughter and music is dim and lifeless. Lindy's once striving neighborhood has become a blighted, crime-infested area. Yet after a few days there, Maxine realizes that Lindy and Sydenham Street itself have been the source of her own strength and success, and she is moved to help both reclaim their glory. Bebe Moore Campbell's writing is "clean and clear," said The Washington Post Book World. "Her emotions run hot, but her most important characteristic is uncompromising intelligence coupled with a perfectionist's eye for detail." With lyrical prose, rich humor, and keen insight, she creates a moving story of hope and redemption, of the faith and commitment that can make any comeback possible.