Ghost
meets The Divine Secrets of the Ya-Ya Sisterhood
in an engaging second novel about a newly widowed African-American woman and her unusual support group. Manhattan hospital worker Rowtina Washington, 40, loses her husband, an easygoing UPS deliveryman nicknamed Turtle, when he has a stroke while driving and plows into a storefront. Grief is compounded by stress—of arranging the funeral and dealing with her domineering mother, Sylvia—but Rowtina finds surprising comfort in a visit from Turtle's ghost. As she tries to come to grips with the incident, Rowtina turns to Nelda Battey, a hospital nurse who invites her to join the Leave Him and Live Sisterhood, a group that helps its members cope with their grief and refocus on their lives. Rowtina is initially skeptical, but after settling in with her fellow sisters, she leaves her Harlem apartment and becomes a Greenwich Village neighbor of the independent lesbian Nelda. Romance follows when Rowtina meets a sexy Mexican hairdresser named Picasso Alegria, whose come-on includes a makeover that begins to transform the conservative, slightly repressed Rowtina. Wright's (Sunday You Learn How to Box
) lively, compassionate character writing gives the novel a strong core to buttress his quiet but well-wrought protagonist. But most of the plotting beyond the group interaction is boilerplate; Rowtina's romance with Picasso is storybook, and an attempt to energize the subplot with a romantic confrontation between Rowtina and Picasso's salon partner, Mercedes, turns melodramatic. Readers will root for the likable Rowtina, though, and relish her quirky friends—motherly Osceola, spunky Nelda, uptight Egyptia—as they help each other find their own happy endings. (Mar.)
