Carole Southwood, Call Me Shady

Carole Southwood will celebrate publication of her first novel Call Me Shady, with a reading from the book on Wednesday, May 21, at 7 pm at Talking Leaves…Books Main Street store, 3158 Main Street in Buffalo.  The reading is free and open to the public; a book signing will follow, with copies of the book available for sale.

Call Me Shady is the real-life survival story of an infant child abandoned by her mother, raised by a vengeful, gangster father and other manipulative guardians, and living in the company of many ill-chosen friends, who ultimately finds a way to confront her troubled past and move towards a healthy future.

Janet “Shady” Shahadi’s life doesn’t start out well.  The daughter of an Arab father and Irish mother, she is fourteen months old when her mother decides to give her away, bundling her up and having a cab driver deliver her to her father’s cigar store.  Shady grows up in alternately nurturing and abusive environments.

After a disastrous marriage and numerous affairs and fly-by-night relationships, Shady falls in love with Bobby Summerville, a black law student and sixties-generation civil rights activist.  Bobby deepens Shady’s knowledge of  the world and of herself, but the lovers clash at every turn and eventually part ways.  Shady is devastated, but finds solace in other men.  When she visits a palm reader who tells her that her life story will be made into a book, Shady is skeptical.  But when she advertises her services as a free-lance typist, she meets the woman who will soon become her biographer.  As Shady types her story, she is forced to confront her painful past—and start down the path to healing.