Starlight Passage - Hardcover

A spirited historical tour with bestselling Bunkley's customary tablespoon of sugar (Black Gold, 1994, etc.): The facts go down easily enough, but the lavender prose leaves a bit of a headache. Kiana Sheridan is a bright and attractive young woman with a single-minded purpose: To uncover the mysteries of her African- American heritage while in simultaneous pursuit of her Ph.D in history. When she leaves behind her comfortable high-school teaching job, her dead-end relationship (to an unambitious Gulf War vet), and her entire former life in Houston, Kiana doesn't look back; once in Washington, D.C., she begins recovering her family history by first learning all she can about her great-great grandfather, an escaped slave and the talented glass artist whose work has only recently become the enthusiastic focus of collectors. But there are obstacles standing between Kiana and her doctoral dissertation/pilgrimage: stepsister Ida, a con artist who was once jailed for credit card fraud, has reasons of her own for interfering with Kiana's goals (sheer greed being the primary motivation), and Kiana's own beloved grandmother Hester seems determined to bury the past forever. With the help of photojournalist Rex Tandy (the handsome, sensitive tour guide of the Underground Railroad Tour Kiana plans to take to launch her research) and a wise, maternal woman named Portia, Kiana eventually uncovers the dramatic truths of her ancestry--and also discovers her true inheritance. What befalls the conniving, hapless Ida, and the relationship that develops between Kiana and Rex, gives the narrative a necessary pace and tension; some of the discussions of reparations (regaining what whites have taken from blacks during the long history of slavery) is confusedly ambivalent--Kiana seems at first an unequivocal advocate but later bemoans the ``personal expense'' required of the mission to reclaim. Bunkley continues to overwrite, but, still, this is her best work to date. (Author tour) -- Copyright ©1996, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

Each of Bunkley's novels has dealt with the historical legacy of African Americans-Black Gold with black landowners in Texas in the early 1900s, and Wild Embers with African Americans in WWII. Here, taking up the issue of reparations for exploited black folk artists, she limns a contemporary black woman's search for her roots. Kiana Sheridan's faltering dissertation research leaps forward when she uncovers her deceased mother's family narrative. Convinced that an ancestor was Soddy Russell, an artisan whose work has begun to command record prices, she joins a Smithsonian tour she hopes will prove her case-only to learn, in D.C., that the trip has been canceled. Intrigued by Kiana's project, however, tour guide Rex Tandy agrees to lead her on a solo tour. Before departing for Tennessee, Kiana visits her stepsister Ida, who is deeply envious of Kiana despite a powerful job and her engagement to a rising black congressman. As Kiana grows suspicious of the sudden infusion of "Soddy Glass" into the art market, Ida-who commissions fakes that inflate prices-pursues desperate measures to prevent her carefully constructed world from collapsing. Meanwhile, a parallel subplot, set mostly during the Civil War, details the perseverance and courage of Kiana's ancestors, slave couple Adi and Price; while back in the present, Rex finds his growing romantic interest in Kiana distracting him from the troubles of his delinquent brother. Bunkley's lively characters, as well as her research into the question of reparation, elevate this tale above a standard romantic melodrama-but there's plenty of desire and danger here, too.
Copyright 1996 Reed Business Information, Inc.