About the Book
Audine, A Sinful, Cursed, Malevolent, and Deceptive Woman
Audine, A Malevolent, Cursed and Sinful Woman,” will tell the story of Audine Collins after she was booted out of her home after attempting to steal over a thousand dollars from her husband, Wayne Collins.
Set in New Orleans, Louisiana, in 1933, Audine is now alone, riding on a train bound for Chicago. During her journey on the train, she meets a couple, Franklin and Anais Malveaux. Anais tries to be friendly to Audine with idle chatter. However, Audine is fiercely jealous, seeing how Anais and her husband, who are newlyweds, lovingly interact with each other. Bickering between Anais and Audine shuts everything down between the couple, and Audine, especially when she steps on Anais’ foot, injuring her to the point that she is unable to walk due to intense pain. A Black nurse, who is also traveling to Chicago, saves the day for Anais by administering a soothing salve to her injured foot, easing
the pain. During the last leg of the train ride, Anais and Franklin want nothing to do with Audine and therefore ignore her. On the train, Audine meets a tall, dark, handsome Pullman Porter by the name of Walter Pickman. Audine is immediately attracted to Pickman, who offers her three meals a day during her journey. Delighted and relieved that she does not have to spend money three times a day on the train to eat, Audine believes that the meals served to her are free of charge, that is, until Walter extorts her to pay an astronomical amount for the meals. After the last leg of the journey, the final blow comes when Audine observes Walter being picked up in his car, driven by a tall and beautiful woman named Winifred Jackson, with whom Walter is deeply in love.
Heartbroken and devastated after seeing them leave and remembering the meaningless sexual tryst on the train with Walter, it leaves him humiliated. With no more money, not dressed fittingly for the freezing weather, and clueless on how to get around using Chicago’s transportation system, Audine has no other choice but to walk in the unfamiliar streets of Chicago. After wandering in the bitter cold for over an hour, Audine notices a beautiful house in the Bronzeville section of Chicago.
Elated, Audine answers the ad on the door and is selected to stay with Thomas Almonds, a powerful Chicago Pastor, and his wife, Sathronia. Sathronia is married for a second time to Almonds, due to the murder of her husband, who was Almond’s best friend and served as his right hand and head deacon. Almonds is also the stepfather to Sathronia’s young adult daughters, ages twenty-three, twenty-two, and twenty-one. “Bishop” is the title name that Almonds insists his followers call him by, and his wife has dark secrets that Audine will no less expose. After joining the church and volunteering to serve as an usher, Audine ends up discovering what Sathronia’s mysterious secret is. Audine reveals to Thomas Almonds everything that she observed Sathronia doing behind his back. After interrogating Sathronia, Almonds uncovers numerous “skeletons in the cupboard” that she has been hiding since being elevated to first lady of their church and banishes her from their marital home. Turning to Audine in gratitude, Almonds ends up having a sexual one-night stand with her. During a heat of passion, she reveals her true feelings to him. She’s exceedingly confident that in a matter of two months, she’ll have a marital future with Almonds, become the “first lady” of his church, and, with time, evolve into a “loving” stepmother to the daughters that Sathronia left behind. After their tryst, Almonds discloses to Audine that she’s too much of a gossipmonger, hypocrite, and liar. Then, in a surprise twist, Almonds discloses to Audine that he knows why she came to Chicago and wants nothing to do with her. Audine is mortified, embarrassed, and infuriated. To seek revenge for being used sexually, she wakes up early the next morning with a plan. With her suitcases packed, she calls a “friend” who gives her a ride to the church she serves in. Having a set of keys given to Audine by a deacon who is smitten with her, Audine sneaks into the church and cleans out the church’s safe, which contains thousands of dollars in cash. After a week of being on the run, Audine finds the perfect hiding place in a rural section of Chicago and ends up staying in a place that she never dreamed she’d ever lay her head in, a filthy flophouse laden with drunks, murderers, gamblers, and prostitutes. When the coast is clear, Audine settles in the small community, where she joins another church and once again spreads falsehoods, venomous rumors, and heaps acts of cruelty upon a faithful church elder and a woman who attends the church. What Audine doesn’t know is that the elderly woman is a powerful Hoo-doo practitioner by the name of Lillian Moore, who will finally “sew” Audine’s mouth shut forever.
Pieces
1932. In New Orleans, Louisiana, Clarence Margaret is a successful African American farmer living in a rural southern community with his Black French Creole wife, Maria St. Laurent. They appear to be happily married and are the parents of five children. Things aren’t always what they seem, because Clarence keeps numerous secrets that eventually turn into lies, tearing his family apart. During an outing, a loud and brazen woman by the name of Maydell Scott makes sexual advances to Clarence in front of Maria, who also has a secret that she’s kept from her husband for years. She’s a hoodoo practitioner whose hexes are powerful. A physical altercation erupts between the two women, causing extensive injury to Maydell. After Clarence and Maria return home to their children, Maria slips away into the tool shed and performs a ritual to send Maydell away forever. By midnight, Maydell is dead, and Maria and Clarence have conceived their sixth child. A neighbor of Clarence and Maria, Audine Booker is a widow and mother of two. Audine is a malicious rumor maker and a liar who wants everything that Maria and Clarence have. One morning, Audine showed up unexpectedly as Clarence and Maria were in the midst of a heated argument about Maria’s suspicions that Clarence was being unfaithful, which he vehemently denied. A local boy, who was a friend to Clarence and Maria’s middle son, Joseph, was murdered several weeks back, and fearing for the safety of her family, Audine came to ask Clarence’s assistance to take care of her two children, her teenage son, Mason, and her beautiful twenty-one-year-old daughter, Violet. Clarence soon becomes involved in a passionate relationship with Violet, who is deeply in love with him. Maria has a bad feeling about Violet and doesn’t trust her. After being away for over three hours, Maria was worried to the point of feeling sick, but upon hearing her husband’s truck pull up to the property, she was relieved that he had returned safely. From the kitchen window, she observes him getting out of the truck and helping Violet out. Maria is shocked at what she sees: her husband passionately kissing Violet. Maria’s worst fears are confirmed.
November: It’s Audine’s wedding day to Wayne. On the day of their wedding, Violet, who is serving as her mother’s maid of honor, and Mason, who is walking Audine down the aisle, are ready to leave for the church. Violet feels a sudden rush of nausea and becomes ill. After she recovered, she turned to see that her brother, Mason, was watching. Two weeks later, after a visit to a midwife, Violet’s pregnancy is confirmed, and Clarence admits that he is the father, infuriating the midwife, Mrs. Alice Wade, who is also caring for Maria and her friend, Eucharista Birch, a family friend of Maria’s. He tells Maria that he wants a divorce. Heartbroken and spurned, she takes her revenge on him by placing a deadly snake in the woodpile that bites his hand and kills him. Violet left for Harlem, New York, that evening. However, Maria wasn’t done. She put a Hoodoo hex on Violet that any man who falls in love with her will die, that she will continue to have coughing spells that will worsen and never go away, and that her unborn child will have a life of confusion.
For Audine, it’s declared that she’s a hopeless liar; everything that comes out of her mouth is a lie, she’s a troublemaker, and a thief. She will be banished from her home by Wayne, and he will end their marriage. Forever barren, Audine will be pursued from town to town, never to find peace again.
Extinguished
December 6, 1941. The Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor, and the United States entered World War II.
Kempton St. Laurent, now an army lieutenant, will lead a squadron of twenty Black soldiers, the first of its kind. His close friend Harold, now a captain, visits Kempton’s home to ask Maria St. Laurent for her blessing to marry her daughter, Isabel. They marry, but their joy is short-lived when news arrives that the United States has declared war.
The newlyweds feel bittersweet as Harold must leave immediately with Kempton to serve their country. Maria is devastated because, years earlier, a card reading had revealed Kempton’s fate.
Maria’s son, Avid, is now nine years old and wise beyond his years. He sees his mother’s devastation and does his best to comfort her.
A week after their departure, Maria is awakened by a knock on her door. It’s Ricks, who appeared in the first novel, ‘Pieces,’ and took over managing the farm after Maria’s husband, Clarence, died nine years ago. Maria opens an envelope and finds a notice to vacate. To her shock, it states that the farm and smokehouse are facing foreclosure because Clarence failed to pay the $10,000 mortgage.
Meanwhile, Lieutenant Kempton St. Laurent and his squad of twenty men are on the ground in Nazi Germany. They are outnumbered and outgunned, suffering heavy casualties until Kempton and the few survivors are captured and taken to the notorious prisoner-of-war camp for Black POWs, known as “Sklavencamp” or” Slave Camp.”
After being taken to prison, Kempton is shocked to see not only the conditions of the Sklavencamp but also the conditions of the other Back prisoners, who, like the Jewish prisoners, appear as walking skeletons, and he notices several chimneys that burn around the clock.
The only thing saving Kempton is a diary he keeps hidden under his mattress, and on Liberation Day, his best friend Harold finds it.