It’s not easy to be a woman in your 30s. Potentially all at once, you’re climbing career ladders, dating and looking for a spouse, saving to buy a house, raising children, maintaining friendships and caring for family members.
In her debut novel, Black Girls Must Die Exhausted, Jayne Allen explores all of this through 33-year-old Tabitha Walker, a Black Los Angeles television reporter for KVTV. Everything in her life is turned upside down when she learns that she has a narrow window of opportunity to bear children. Decisions have to be made about her fertility immediately. Tabitha wonders how her boyfriend, Marc, will respond to the news. She worries about how this development might impede her chance for a promotion at the station and how she will pay for all of the potential expenses. Her friends, Alexis and Laila, are her sounding boards while her namesake and grandmother, Tabitha Walker, is her constant source of love.
Readers of Terry McMillan, Fannie Flagg and J. California Cooper will enjoy this novel. It’s the best kind of read, one that elicits both laughter and tears.
Contributed by Maureen Millea Smith, a librarian at the Edina Library and a Minnesota Book Award-winning novelist.
