Rising
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5.0 • 1 Rating
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- $11.99
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- $11.99
Publisher Description
She should have been able to trust him....
"Night sweats were my dance, especially in the Huston home. They were a continuation of the visions I had experienced in Dorchester, only here, they were much more violent."
Set in a wealthy community in northern Michigan, Rising tells the story of nine-year-old Symone, who is adopted by the Hustons--"a shameless family with a house at the top of the hill"--after her mother dies of a drug overdose. And though Symone is all too happy to leave the Dorchester projects behind, she can't help but wonder why this rich white couple has come to the ghetto to adopt " black girl who looked white." Soon Symone discovers that the Hustons aren't saviors but instead demons who have delivered her into another kind of hell. She escapes only to return again years later, realizing that she must face the demons of her past if she has any hope of surviving the future.
Rising is an evocative, undeniably potent, and completely unforgettable novel.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
An eight-year-old girl from the Boston projects is adopted by a wealthy white Michigan family in this luridly imaginative but frequently ludicrous rags-to-riches debut. On the eve of her ninth birthday, Symone awakens to discover the cold dead body of her mother. The beautiful Dolores, a suicidal prostitute, has lost her battle with heroin and alcohol, and has taken to her grave the secret of Symone's father's identity. Living in the projects, Symone has developed advanced survival skills, nourishing herself on "toasted bread for breakfast, plain bread for lunch, and cheese bread for dinner" and making pets of two rats (white Honkee Honkee and black Niggah Niggah). Her problems are exacerbated by a particularly fierce identity crisis she is a "bisexual, biracial, blonde-haired, blue-eyed niggah white girl" trying to pass for black among her project playmates. The racial question fades to the background when she is adopted by Ridge and Madeline Huston, who whisk her away to their mansion in suburban Eden, Mich. Perfect as it may seem on the surface, Huston family life is rotten to the core. A Thanksgiving trip back to Eden when Symone is in her 20s brings back bitter memories and launches Symone and her two Huston sisters on a half-baked quest for revenge. Garbled prose ("who will take to task to count the number of times he extracted her virginity?") and melodrama ("I had stepped over the brain matter of a guy whose head had just been blown off") diminishes the effect of some witty passages ("Dolores came from a family of dirt-poor niggers... and moved to the land of opportunity, the Dorchester projects"). Ford is clearly talented, but this novel rarely bounces back to earth, so far is it over the top. Author tour.
