January 1, 2001
When hip-hop producer/songwriter Harry "Freedom" Hudson decides to buy a reputedly haunted brownstone in Harlem he inadvertently disturbs a passel of fretful ghosts, in Berry's (Redemption Song) latest novel. Freedom directs his lawyer, Ava Vercher, to check on the property, which brings Ava into contact with a childhood friend, real estate attorney Charles Campbell III. While Ava, with her African-inspired clothes and Brooklyn- and Harlem-connected clients, clings to her roots, Charles, who spent his childhood being bullied, made it out of the 'hood to Princeton and "came back white." When the two go to check on the house, they confront an alarming gathering of the dead. These "spirit memories" include Ngozi, an African drummer whose life was brutally interrupted by slavery; Bella, a singer murdered by her white gangster lover; and Johnny, a boy who was killed by his father. Ngozi wants to pass down his beat--which contains the love that has gone out of rap music--to Freedom, while Bella just wants revenge. Charles's grandmother, Dora, who has the gift of seeing spirits, comes from down South to protect Charles from the spirits, but she can't act in time to prevent Freedom from foolishly venturing into the house. Underneath the gothic trappings is a meditation on the price of forgetting history. Like a Bill Withers song, Berry's writing is infused with an aching nostalgia for an earlier time, when there was "more to life than what we could see, touch, hear or feel." (Jan.) Forecast: A funky, stylized jacket may attract general readers, but those with an appreciation for New Age spirituality will best enjoy this well-intentioned if preachy tale. In any case, Berry's first novel was a Blackboard bestseller and this novel should hit that list again.