Bid Whist at Midnight

The book opens at the home of Sardis, who invites Grace and Dorcus over at midnight for a card game of bid whist. The women had bonded in college over schoolwork, boyfriends, and card games but haven’t interacted for nearly 20 years. As they play, they take turns revisiting the dark spaces of their pasts, as well as a dreaded event involving their friend Taletha. The women’s painful life decisions, traumas, and losses unfold through a series of flashbacks, and readers also learn how the tragic early life of Eartha, Sardis’s mother, weighed negatively on Sardis’s life. The women’s stories unpeel like an onion’s layers, their life dramas interwoven with and strongly influenced by campus protests, violent police actions, Malcolm X, the Black Nationalist movement, and the Vietnam War. Overall, Bid Whist at Midnight is a thoughtful, well-developed novel whose characters and their plights stay with you long after the story closes. The author was born and raised in Charleston, South Carolina. She has a background in English Education and Journalism, holding a BA in English from the HBCU South Carolina State University and an MA in Journalism from California State University, Northridge. Bid Whist at Midnight is her first major work. Since then, she has written a children’s book titled Jaxon Discovers Dimension Z. This book introduces young readers to imaginative storytelling grounded in discovery and diversity.