Tuesday, June 24, 2014

Debbie Doesn't Do It Anymore by Walter Mosley

Debbie Doesn't Do It Anymore: A Novel by Walter Mosley --- 265 pages

This is a very moving story of a woman struggling with self-loathing, despair, forgiveness and redemption. Debbie Dare is a black porn film star, immediately and strikingly identifiable because of her signature (bleached) platinum blonde hair, vivid blue (contact lenses) eyes and the distinctive white tattoo just below her left eye.

She comes home from a long, exhausting film shoot to find her husband (an ex-porn star, producer) dead, electrocuted along with the young girl he was "auditioning" in their bathtub, when the video camera fell into the water.

The accumulated shocks of the day force Debbie to face some hard truths about her life and the path that led her to this dead end. She decides this is her chance to quit the porn industry and make a new and better life for herself. Making the decision is the easy part.  The hard part is understanding how she got to where she is, and what she has to do to get to where she wants to be.

Mosley doesn't pull any punches. In order to show us Debbie's struggle to rise, he must also show us the depths of her fall. In the process he gives us another portrait in his American gallery of flawed but persistent souls in search of salvation.

Walter Mosley is the award-winning author of the Easy Rawlins and Leonid McGill mystery series, as well as many other works of fiction, nonfiction, poetry and drama.

Click HERE to visit Walter Mosley's web site.

Click HERE to read an interview with Mosley talking about Debbie Doesn't Do It Anymore in the Chicago Tribune.

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