House of Light

by Joyce Carol Thomas Narrated by Patricia R. Floyd

Overview

Women in pain are drawn to The House of Light in rural Ponca, Oklahoma--refuge of Abyssinia Jackson, M.D. It is here that three women will find strength and regain control of their lives. Vennie, an over-worked and disrespected "day girl," comes to Abyssinia with pained and tired feet. Pearline is a buxom beauty who bears the scars and bruises from her jealous ex-husband's constant beating. The independent Zenobia, an impassioned blues singer will learn to open herself to new friendships and possibly even love from a man on the other side of town. Filled with inspiring, lyrical prose and honest characters, House of Light is the joyous story of a community brought together by love and decency and bound by the ideal of helping others help themselves.

Editorial Reviews

Maya Angelou

Joyce Carol Thomas's characters enact the verities of human life: romance, apprehension, loss, and hope.

Alice Walker

Joyce Carol Thomas is a great and graceful soul. Through her example she encourages love . . . growth, and hope.

Washington Post

Carol Thomas writes with confidence . . . certain passages in this novel are so lovely and transcendent that they are breathtaking.

Essence

A gem -- an upbeat, lyrical novel that features one of the most memorable characters so far this year . . . a wonderful new voice in fiction.

Publishers Weekly - Publisher's Weekly

Best known for her poetry and young adult books (including the National Book Award winner Marked by Fire), Thomas here tries her hand at adult fiction, composing a moving novel narrated by a chorus of African-American men and women living in Ponca City, Okla. Abyssinia Jackson-Jefferson, doctor and healer, owns the central voice. In treating her patients, she attempts to deal with their general grief and stress as well as their superficial symptoms. Vennie is a "day girl," mistrusted, ill-used and condescended to by the imperious women whose houses she cleans. Pearline Spencer, estranged from her violent husband, Isaiah, lives in constant fear of his return. Copper-haired Zenobia, a blues singer tired of the demands of performing in big city clubs, comes home and takes up with a white man. Jackson and her almost too-good-to-be-true husband, the lawyer Carl Lee Jefferson, have troubles of their own: they want children but are unable to have them, and keep postponing the decision to adopt. The novel is anecdotal and episodic, with the focus rarely on Abyssinia, yet she is the source of Pearline's courage and Vennie's determination to unionize the "day girls," and even of Isaiah's recognition that he can draw on his own memories of being brutalized to encourage the town's wild young men to act responsibly. This bittersweet story some of the doctor's patients will never be healed is lyrically told and becomes ever more engrossing as the various strands are gathered up. The novel is marred only by unsubtle repetition, a rhetorical device Thomas relies on too frequently. Agent, Anna Ghosh. (Apr.) Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information.

Kirkus Reviews

An African-American doctor is blessed with the power to heal bodies and souls: in the first adult fiction by noted YA author Thomas (The Bowlegged Rooster, 2000, etc.). Dr. Abyssinia Jackson knows nearly everything about the people in her practice and even understands what they don't tell her. The close-knit black community of Ponca City, Oklahoma, respects and cherishes the dedicated physician, who sees to their every need, and her modest offices are known as the House of Light. Religion, even among these regular churchgoers, only goes so far. While Pearline prays for relief from her troubles by placing her hand on the radio during the preacher's sermon, she finally sees the light and goes to Dr. Jackson after a vicious beating from her jealous husband Isaiah. Fortunately, Pearline's long-lost friend Zenobia, a blues singer and a force to be reckoned with, is coming back to town on the 5:30 bus. If Zenobia can't sing some courage into her, no one can. Pearline's other big worry is her grandma Vennie, worn out by years of domestic service to a suspicious, cantankerous white woman. But Vennie gets by, if only thanks to Dr. Jackson, who even manages to help Isaiah with her instinctive understanding of the psychological demons that assail him. Zenobia goes to work as a housekeeper for a lonely widower who falls in love with her; she's saved by the good doctor when she runs out into the snow in an ecstatic trance and nearly freezes to death. Indeed, an ecstatic thread links all these souls, especially in the gospel songs of faith and redemption that all share and sing. Abyssinia's greatest gift comes at Christmas, when her daughter, Amber, returns from California carryingwithher a song she has composed for her mother. Lyrical, earthy prose gives this deceptively simple story depth and richness.

Product Details

BN ID:	2940170672028
Publisher:	Recorded Books, LLC
Publication date:	03/04/2011
Edition description:	Unabridged

Read an Excerpt

Chapter One

Zenobia of the wild copper hair and lithe body sings and plays guitar nightly in the small Oklahoma City nightclub called the Green Apple. Word of mouth quickly spreads the story of the sultry, young woman who calls herself Miss Z, whose repertoire specializes in blues numbers.

    There are those who swear she can make a song walk, can make the guitar cry whenever she wants to.

    "Sing it!" they chant at first, then as the smoke-clouded room—reeking of whiskey and stale wine—fills, they hush. The audience listens for every twist and turn of note above the frosted glasses tinkling with ice, and through the ribbons of double-strength tobacco smoke they study Miss Z's every move.

    "Reminds me of Bessie Smith," a tray-balancing waiter sighs.

    "Billie Holiday's daughter and Mahalia Jackson's cousin mixed," a chunky woman declares after downing a gin fizz.

    "Got to be kin to Aretha Franklin. It's some gospel in the woodpile somewhere. I know what I'm listening to!"

    Sad-voiced, blues-struck, and good, Zenobia gets lost in her music, forgetting her audience, especially when she comes to her finale, her signature piece, and the crowd's favorite, "The Thrill Is Gone."

    When she sings the last note of the first act, the lights shimmer off her copper hair. "Man, oh man, look at that!" the waiter exclaims each night.

    The audience stomps, claps, and hollers their glee. The manager, Mr. Mason, all business, short and nattily dressed in his pinstriped suit, helps her off the stage after her finale.

    The crowds gather nightly to hear the woman with a voice they think reminds them of someone famous, but it is Miss Z's style that mesmerizes them.

    "Her phrasing is like nothing you've ever experienced. It takes your breath away," the major music critic—an advocate of blues music—writes in the Oklahoma City Herald, the largest circulation newspaper in the state.

    After the newspaper review headlines the entertainment section in the Sunday edition, more people come rushing to hear her for themselves. They sit in the dimly-lit bar, head soaked in Miss Z music, heart jumping, feet twitching to the hard-to-keep-still rhythms that have them ordering trays of drinks, to the delight of Mr. Mason, the club owner.

    Zenobia sings "The Thrill Is Gone," and every night the crowd multiplies. For the first time, Mr. Mason has to turn away customers.

    "We'll have to add another set," he tells Zenobia.

    "Then you'll be doubling my pay," she replies.

    "I'm already paying you top dollar."

    "Twice the work. Twice the money," Zenobia counters.

    Mr. Mason gleefully imagines doubling his nightly income.

    "Robbing me blind," he mutters under his breath even as he agrees to Zenobia's demand.

    The second set proves to be as successful as the first. And still more customers squeeze in.

    One blue-black man swears that Miss Z makes flames leap from her guitar strings. The guitar follows her voice faithfully into uncharted musical terrain that only she can negotiate. She takes the audience with her to places nobody else has ever been. Miss Z gives everything she has.

    Offstage, Zenobia doesn't allow anybody to touch her or her guitar.

    Both are virgins.

    Zenobia's reputation as a blues singer continues to grow, and Mr. Mason thinks of expanding the building so he can accommodate more customers. Visitors from places as far away as Tulsa, Boley, and Stillwater go searching for the Green Apple Blues Club. Once there they start lining up as early as dawn, just to be able to hear Zenobia sing.

    One Thursday night in her dressing room as she prepares to go on stage, she hears a strained voice shouting.

    "I save my money to come all the way up here from Arkansas, and you're telling me I can't get a seat? Man, I took two days off from work just to see the woman. My uncle over in Langston saw her and told me, 'Drop everything and go hear you some Miss Z!'"

    "I'm sorry, sir," Mr. Mason says. "But ..."

    "You let me in!" the traveler insists.

    He pleads so desperately that the rowdy crowd, a perverse bunch, feels it is their business to keep the poor man out.

    "You stand in line just like the rest of us, and if you don't get a ticket, get a rain check!" one woman wags her finger.

    "I heard that man from Arkansas. Let him in for the next set," Zenobia says to the manager when he stops by her dressing room.

    "I can't do that. It would make the other customers angry," Mr. Mason tells her.

    "If that man don't get in, I'm not singing," she says sitting herself back down at the dressing stool.

    "The hell you ain't!"

    Zenobia wonders aloud, "What kind of unchristian folks out there anyway, let a person drive hundreds of mile and don't show a little charity?"

    "That ain't your business. Your business is to sing."

    She leaps up, quickly sticks her guitar in its case, and begins throwing clothes into her suitcase.

    "Where you think you're going?" Mr. Mason barks.

    "Don't feel good," Zenobia says.

    "I got a packed house out there come to hear you sing and play. I pay you up front what you ask for every single week, now you go give them people some music!"

    "Can't do that, don't feel good," Zenobia says stubbornly, now locking her suitcase.

    "These folks about ready to riot, already they're saying they're not leaving 'til they hear 'The Thrill Is Gone.'"

    "Guess you got yourself a riot," she says, lifting the suitcase off the couch.

    He grabs hold of her arm.

    "Take your hands off me, Mister! I already played one set, so I'm taking half the money. The rest is on the dressing table."

    He sees the greenbacks stacked there, but the sight of them just makes him madder.

    His mouth curls down meanly. "You ain't no bigger than a minute."

    "Yeah?" Zenobia answers. "No bigger than a minute all right. This minute'll make you ache some awful hours."

    Mr. Mason looks back and forth from her to his investment stacked on the table and grabs her again, digging his fingers roughly into her arm.

    "I said ..." he starts.

    Before she can even think about it, it is a lightning reflex really, Zenobia picks up the closest thing she can lay her hands on, in this case, a brass lamp off the dressing table and hits Mr. Mason with it.

    Thwop!

    He slides to the floor.

    A king-sized knot rises on Mr. Mason's mashed head.

    He tries to stand up.

    Wobbles and droops back down.

    Before he can collect himself and get back up, Zenobia picks up her guitar, grabs her suitcase, and takes off for the back door.

    A loud, crazy noise stops her in her tracks.

    It is the sound of the predicted riot breaking out in the main room.

    "You got what you deserved!" she says to Mason before slamming the door behind her.

    When he finally pulls himself up and stumbles to the stage entrance, he looks out on an uprising of unhappy customers.

    "Good God," he moans.

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Excerpted from House of Light by Joyce Carol Thomas. Copyright © 2001 by Joyce Carol Thomas. Excerpted by permission. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.

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