Morning lovelies,
Today I am spotlight Mahogany Slade by Stephen Robinson.
Synopsis: Beautiful, sophisticated, and unpredictable, Janet Tomalin represents every fantasy Brad Carlton grew up having - and more than a few her never realized.
When they meet on their first day of college in Athens, Georgia, the stylish New Yorker completely upends the staid Southerner's ordered universe. They fall for each other intensely and completely. It's the all-consuming passion of a natural performer and her adoring audience.
There's just one problem: Mahogany Slade, the woman from Janet's not-so-distant past...and inescapable future. Janet knows once Brad meets the dangerous Miss Slade and learns the truth, their once-in-a-lifetime love is doomed.
Mahogany Slade is the romantic yet acerbic story of young people escaping themselves in a town where your identity is everything. It's as sweet as Janet finds Brad and as irresistible as he finds her.
I managed to get an excerpt of the novel to share with you and I'm super excited about it. Here it is:
The area
of downtown Athens spanning west to Pulaski and north to where Dougherty curves
into Prince was no larger than a few square blocks, but its presence in the
collective imaginations of musicians—either current, soon to be, or never will
but nonetheless hopeful—and their devotees loomed larger than Sanford Stadium.
Although
more traditional students, either through timidity or general lack of
interest, never wandered past the Georgia Theatre, many others yearning for
kinship or relevance or a little of both would descend on the stretch of
Washington Street that Heather Aulds contemptuously called the “Alterna-mall”—a
strip of bars, clubs, and even the requisite tattoo parlor extending from the
40 Watt and providing a convenient one-stop shop for alternative culture.
Dressed
in their finest tattered clothing, they came ostensibly for the music and were
welcomed if they knew someone who created it, even if the connection was as far
removed as a poor family relation.
Winter
was when you could witness the preening of those who had successfully molted
the appearances and personas of high school over the course of Fall Quarter,
and the young girl at the 40 Watt with the fresh tattoo from next door might go
so far as to claim an extensive, deeply affecting (and only slightly affected) history with the band currently playing on stage (she
happened to know the classmate of the roommate of the drummer) and would
vehemently deny ever having cheered on the Georgia Bulldogs with anything
approaching zealotry in the distant, long ago days of September.
If my
recollection of this musical arcade is thorn-covered rather than rose-colored,
I must confess a lingering bias stemming from Janet’s having dated a prominent
member of the coterie. Scott Waldorf was rarely a subject of discussion between
us, and I fought off, often unsuccessfully, any painfully vivid thoughts of
scenarios involving them that were, I was certain, incomparably pleasurable
for him.
And then
came that Sunday afternoon at Rocky’s when she’d plucked an olive from my slice
of pizza and announced, while chewing it entirely on the left side of her
mouth, “I want you to come with me to the Shoebox next Wednesday.”
Scott’s
band was performing, and their dreadful music and lyrics were not worth a British
penny, so I hadn’t the slightest idea why Janet wanted me to go. I considered
resisting again, as I had her far more appealing offer to see Damn Yankees,
but I knew my reward for saying yes was seeing the half smile on her face reach
its full, ecstatic potential. So I agreed, almost eagerly, and on a blustery
evening with February lapping at our heels, I accompanied her to the
“Alterna-mall.”
About the Author, Stephen Robinson:
Stephen Robinson graduated from the University of Georgia in 1996. He has lived in many places but feels at home somewhere else. He's written for newspapers and magazines. Mahogany Slade is his first work of fiction.
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