Reconnecting with the South and some real-life characters

NOTED playwright and essayist Pearl Cleage has a body of work distinguished by its seamless blending of women’s intimate stories and broader political issues. Her most popular plays, “Flyin’ West� and “Blues for an Alabama Sky,� concern historical black women whose personal circumstances and dilemmas reflect and inform larger societal issues of slavery and racism. For her fans, however, the greatest drawback to Cleage’s stage work has been that the emotional bonds formed with her characters end when the curtain comes down.

Cleage has solved that with her fiction, in which she spins tales of a group of loosely connected, contemporary black women still struggling with the personal and political. Her first novel, 1998’s “What Looks Like Crazy on an Ordinary Day,� exposed a broad cross section of readers to the black residents of Idlewild, Mich., and protagonist Ava Johnson, a socially conscious Atlanta transplant contending with her HIV-positive diagnosis, church corruption, a second chance at love and the Sewing Circus, a multigenerational group of women dedicated to sex education and consciousness-raising. Her second novel, “I Wish I Had a Red Dress,� revolves around Ava’s widowed sister Joyce, who must balance her challenging job as a social worker with the Sewing Circus, the shedding of her mourning clothes and her gradual reawakening to love.

“Some Things I Never Thought I’d Do,� her latest novel, is a tale of a woman’s struggle to overcome the ravages of drug addiction. Protagonist Regina “Gina� Burns, a 34-year-old former “stomp-down dope fiend,� has emerged from rehab only to find her house in foreclosure. To save it, she must take a consulting assignment with popular motivational speaker and activist Beth Davis, her former employer for 10 years and her almost mother-in-law.

The job is fraught with personal risk because Beth rejected Gina as a wife for her beloved only child, Son, which sent her spiraling into cocaine and her current dilemma. But Beth has presented a tempting offer: enough money to bring Gina’s mortgage current and the opportunity to shape the Legacy Project, a tribute to Son’s life and work as founder of a powerful black men’s movement. Gina eagerly accepts, not only because of her friendship with Son, who was lost in the World Trade Center attack on Sept. 11, 2001, but more importantly, because “I’m not going to greet my mama in paradise and tell her I snorted up her mama’s house because I wanted a man who didn’t want me.�

To do the job, Gina must return to Atlanta, headquarters for Beth’s Son Rise Enterprises and home to Morehouse College, Son’s alma mater and holder of his personal papers. Gina is both intrigued and troubled by her aunt Abbie’s vision that she will not only complete a task for a fallen friend on the trip but also rescue a damsel in distress and be united with a man who “has the ocean in his eyes� and who has been searching for his true love across time. “How many black people do you know with blue eyes?� Gina wails.

In Atlanta, Gina finds an idyllic enclave in the crime-riddled West End, a place where women can walk the streets without worry and elders tend community gardens on the site of burned-down crack houses. The force behind this haven is her landlord, Blue Hamilton, an “Africa dark,� blue-eyed former soul singer whose enforcement methods involve his godfather-like persona, “conversations� with drug dealers and other miscreants and, Gina suspects, much worse. There is also the malevolent force of picture-perfect Beth, a woman Gina regards as being “like a lot of charismatic people ... better appreciated from a distance.�

Despite Beth’s grief over Son, she is consumed with parlaying her large, newly registered base of fans into a run for governor, even if it means stepping over Precious Hargrove, a hard-working West End state senator. In her relentless quest for political power, Beth is willing to say or do anything, even deny the legacy of her secretive son and deal with the evil thugs Blue has tried to keep at bay.

For all its sociological and political overtones, “Some Things� is a playful, joy-filled novel, shot with the humor that distinguished Cleage’s earlier fiction and her obvious love of black people and culture. An array of well-drawn secondary characters balances the heavier action, including Aretha, daughter and niece of protagonists in the earlier novels. Cleage also clearly adores Atlanta, which she re- creates in loving detail, providing insights into the city’s historic nightspots, vibrant neighborhoods and restaurants, including the real-life Youngblood’s R&B; Cafe, where Cleage’s descriptions of the Gene Chandler T-bone steak or the Mary Wells fillet of salmon may tempt readers to book Delta’s next flight.

The book has its flaws -- an overreliance on italics and the too-sparing use of a secondary character in the early chapters who figures prominently in the revelation of Son’s secret life. Troubling too is Gina’s romance with the morally ambiguous Blue, a complex, compassionate man who feels compelled to step outside the law to make his neighborhood safe. “What price was I prepared to pay for that safety?� Gina wonders at one point. The question will resonate with anyone struggling to live in a community beset by crime. But there are enough issues left open to raise hope for a sequel to resolve them and give us more of these engaging, life-loving characters.