Fire & Brimstone: A Novel

Chris Desmereaux—college graduate churchgoer and single mother—is struggling with poverty coming to terms with her sexuality and finding love—though she is unaware that her life will change for better or worse the day Gayle Evans finds her personal ad in the paper and answers it.. Gayle Evans toe-tapping knee-slapping make-you-wanna-holla Minister of Music with a divine gift from God. Praise the Lord is her mantra. Macking women is her game. Destroying every life she touches Gayle brings more misery than harmony. She has a lesson or two to learn after she uses her relationship with God to break up a seemingly happy home. Alternately set in Washington D.C. and Memphis Tennessee Fire & Brimstone is an in your face tale that explores lesbianism and black motherhood as both separate and integrated issues impacting the main characters role as a single parent while opening dialogue on same-sex domestic violence religious beliefs bisexuality negligent fathers economics and intra-racial caste systems among African Americans. Depending on ones beliefs and opinions Fire & Brimstone leaves no room for in-between emotions leading the reader to ultimately draw his or her own conclusion as to what the ending actually means: Is homosexuality a sin or does God love us as we are? The author reminds us that gay women are everywhere even in the African American church—a place where no one expects to find them. Fire & Brimstone does an excellent job of testing the boundaries of 21st century morality.