Books

2015 Pulitzer Prize in autobiography

IMAGINED LIVES Memoir

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This powerful and unflinching memoir is an entry for the 2015 Pulitzer Prize in autobiography. It takes us into the life of a woman who both witnesses and participates in extraordinary events starting in the turbulent and historic 1960s. In this poignant autobiography, we are privy to the secrets and lies, anguish, heartbreak, trauma, joy, successes and passion of a life well lived. Through it all, the author has one theme as the backdrop of her life – that love is the only answer.

Go on an unforgettable journey that explores…

Cliffside condos. Condemned houses. Boarding school. A battered mother. An abusive stepfather. Paris nights. The English Channel. Legends at the Apollo Theater. Murderers. A junkie boyfriend. A South African expatriate. An overdose. Caribbean hideouts. Broadway openings. Hurricanes. Carnival. And love. So much love.

Excerpt:

And it was tender, more than a little tender. It wasn’t like in the movies at all, was what I recall thinking. This feeling creeping through me was taking its time and finding the right places to stop and pause. It was different, more subtle than I could have ever expected it to be. This was falling in love. He felt grown and powerful and being in his arms was the second best feeling I’d had in my life. I was trembling inside and prayed to God that it didn’t show outside. I looked up into his face and found him smiling at me.

THE SOUTH AFRICA OF HIS HEART

Available at CreateSpace. An Amazon Company
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https://www.createspace.com/3992912

It is 1976, the American Bicentennial and the summer of the Soweto student riots in South Africa. The massacres sparked world awareness of the horrors of apartheid and, many believe, were the catalyst for the eventual fall of apartheid fourteen years later when Nelson Mandela walked out of prison.

A twenty-two year old woman enrolls in a college prep program in Harlem and meets a South African expatriate thirty-plus years her senior. He is there teaching English. Amidst the turmoil of that summer, they fall in love, marry and make plans to move to Nigeria.

Set in New York, the Caribbean, London, South Africa and Los Angeles The South Africa of His Heart is a moving thirty-year memoir about how the circles in life can lead us to astounding places-often by chance. Ms. James shares the true story of the lifelong impact her South African husband made on her life.

What unfolds is a touching, unconventional love story about dedication and a spiritual connection that bridged their physical separations. In a series of fateful discoveries, many years after their last encounter, she uncovers surprising and profound revelations about her first husband.

EXCERPT:

Our lives are made up of both reflections of what might have been and acceptance of what is, on the steady progression of the years we build with the ones we love, and the fantasies of the ones we wished had loved us more or differently. But then, in between that steady progression of sure and comfortable years, we have days or nights that are made up of magical encounters with beautiful people, encounters that change the course of our lives, and that make up the memories we recall in our last breath.