The River Lime
A Gathering of Friends
by
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The message from Dorothy O'Connor to her son, Kendal, was the need to aspire and achieve. Perseverance she argued was a critical tool toward that end. She encouraged educational pursuits and careful planning for the future. She did not want her only child to experience the same or similar pitfalls as she did. In a sense though, both Dorothy O'Connor and Claudia Riggs wanted their children to avoid making the same mistakes they made. Dorothy had never gotten over the experience of being expelled fron nursing school and eventually thrown out of her mother's house for being pregnant out of wedlock. On the other hand, Clauder's memory of being force to live with Henrietta's father at the age of seventeen because she was pregnant with Henrietta, and the fact that she was pregnant every year after that for the next eight years was no less disheartening. So while the messages they conveyed were opposing ones, the reasons for those messages were the same; a mother's love that said, don't make the same mistake I made at your age.
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About the Book
The challenges that face a single mother raising a son can be met in very different ways and have greatly varying results. Single mothers Dorothy O'Connor and Philbertha Canton view education as a way out of abject poverty; meanwhile their friend Velma Jacob resigns herself to her lot and does nothing to improve her quality of life or that of her son, Joshua. Kendal O'Connor, Dorothy's son, follows his mother's direction regarding honesty, foresight, courage, and perseverance and is well on the road to success His love for his childhood sweetheart, Henrietta Riggs, is challenged by her indiscretions and his own poor judgment. Can they survive these challenging times and find solid ground for their romance? Sydney Canton, Philbertha's son, becomes a model student at Mayaro High School and is scholastically well ahead of others his age. His cousin, Joshua Jacob, a.k.a. JJ, who seems destined to be wayward, almost loses his life to a vicious machete attack by two vagabond truants in the Mafeking community, where he lives with his mother and grandmother. Can he overcome this set-back and find a better life? The River Lime: A Gathering of Friends explores the lives of three young men and their mothers, sharing a narrative of hardships, daily struggles, passionate love, jealousy, and indiscretions.
About the Author
Irwin Hinds is the author of Discourse, Betrayals and Deceit, and Staged. He is currently an adjunct associate professor at Medgar Evers College of the City University of New York.