THE UPPER ROOM

Mama Ruby is a highly unconventional mother--a five-hundred-pound Bible-thumping African-American who buries the bodies of the men she has murdered in her own back yard. Mama’s history is just as unusual. After another woman delivered a stillborn daughter, Mama Ruby miraculously brought the baby to life--and stole her, fleeing to the Everglades. As the story follows this usurper mother from the girl’s birth to adulthood, one of the most bizarre, and chilling families in contemporary fiction comes to life. As daughter Maureen approaches adulthood, two conflicting forces converge: Mama’s emotional dependence on her daughter and Maureen’s natural desire for romance and independence. Kevin Free is so skillful that the listener will forget the narrator of this dark comedy is a man. P.R. © AudioFile 2004, Portland, Maine [Published: APR/MAY 04]