All families got secrets, but Joy’s had more than their fair share. So while I’m able to tell you what she did, ain’t no use me pretending that I know why … they was just born under bad moons. This is the story of Joy Bang and her sisters, three singers who dream of a glittering future that briefly, too briefly is theirs. When Joy dies unexpectedly, the floodgates of Baby Palatine’s memory are opened. Foster mother to the sisters from their childhood, she remembers the hopes and dreams which fuelled their meteoric rise. But as the family gathers for the funeral, Baby is forced to acknowledge that as well as the Joy she loved and worshipped, there was another Joy she had never known … A compelling story of jealousy and love, tragedy and deception, and of growing up black in a white world, this is Marsha Hunt’s powerful first novel. Marsha Hunt joins a formidable company of black American writers. Like Maya Angelou, Toni Morrison and Alice Walker, she proclaims the experience of the black American woman in a white dominated world.OBSERVER Intricately constructed and skilfully written, 'Joy' is an assured mixture of tragedy and wry comedy which has something to say – about blackness, about love that binds, and about the way we become what we are.BOOKS