B.W. Read’s Fourth Sunday

Laurel Branch

Wednesday, March 14, 7 pm

Fourth Sunday, a novel by B.W. Read (Because We Read), is the tale of seven women and their journey towards friendship by way of a simple book club. Fourth Sunday is the compilation of six professional African American women: Francesca Cook, Chyla Evans, Clarita Frazier, Allita Irby, Donna Neale and Yolanda Yates. This group met every fourth Sunday to discuss novels on their reading list, socialize and reflect on life’s parallels to people in the novels they read. Disappointed in the disconnect between the literature read and their forward moving lives, each composed chapters reflecting characters loosely based on themselves with a collaborative seventh character. “If there’s a book you really want to read, but it hasn’t been written yet, then you must write it,” Toni Morrison said, and so they did. Fourth Sunday is that book, timeless, cosmopolitan literature. The novel incorporates intellect and riveting facts about medical, political and small business state of affairs while balancing playfulness and sensuality. It is funny, it is sad, it is contemporary, but most of all it is real.