Babylon Sisters - ISBNLookup.com

Publishers Weekly

Catherine Cat Sanderson has a pretty nice life: she likes her consulting business (Babylon Sisters) and her neighborhood (Atlanta's West End), and she's got lovely friends and an absolute peach of a daughter (Phoebe). But said nice life gets complicated when Phoebe takes dramatic steps to find out the identity of her father, which Cat has been lying about for years. Also causing headaches: the sudden, unrelated reappearance of Phoebe's actual father, B.J. (who never knew Phoebe existed and who was, for Cat, the only operatic moment in my otherwise pretty routine life), and Cat's new contract with African-American entrepreneur and battle-axe Ezola Mandeville, who runs an eponymous maid service that's highly praised for its generous support of its workers. Of course Sam Hall, Ezola's sexy right-hand man, confides, We're not really here to... uplift the race. We're really here to make money. And how they're making that money is a lot worse than one would think. Cleage's (Some Things I Never Thought I'd Do) intelligent, lively narrative hits numerous notes domestic drama, romance, thriller right in tune. Agent, Denise Stinson. (Apr.) Copyright 2005 Reed Business Information.

Library Journal

Babylon Sisters, Cleage's fourth novel, is a story of secrets, choices, and consequences. For more than 17 years, Catherine Sanderson has not revealed the identity of her daughter's father and has kept the child's existence hidden from him. However, the universe, teenage curiosity, and two new work assignments conspire to put Catherine's past and present on a collision course. The plot is spun around a tale of women's empowerment, modern-day slavery, betrayal, and the survival of African American community institutions. This book, like Some Things I Never Thought I'd Do, is set in Atlanta and ties up the loose ends from the previous novel, but it is not a sequel. Cleage's background in the theater serves her well in this production; her narration is flawless. Few authors who record their work display the confidence and comfort apparent in her delivery. Recommended for all public libraries.-Gwendolyn Osborne, Evanston, IL Copyright 2005 Reed Business Information.

Kirkus Reviews

Cleage (Some Things I Never Thought I'd Do, 2003, etc.) returns to Atlanta's West End in this comedy-tinged thriller. Catherine "Cat" Sanderson is one of many empowered single mothers living in the district. Her consulting business, Babylon Sisters, is thriving, and her teenaged daughter, Phoebe, is off to private boarding school for her senior year. So far, Cat has managed to deflect Phoebe's insistent questions about her father by planting imagined lovers with real names in college-era diaries concocted to throw Phoebe off the scent. But this scheme backfires when Phoebe demands DNA tests from all the red herrings. Meanwhile, Cat has been recruited by the dulcet-voiced Sam Hall to work for Ezola Mandeville, once a maid, now a maid-service mogul whose company somehow makes a profit while managing to raise the domestic workers it employs out of poverty. Ezola wants to expand her operation to include immigrant and refugee women, a cause Cat embraces because her friend Amelia, a successful lawyer and lap-swimmer, has called on her to help Miriam, a Haitian exile whose sister Etienne has been abducted into sex slavery. But Sam's "greed-is-good" cynicism has aroused Cat's suspicions, and her life is further unsettled by the reappearance of Phoebe's father, renowned foreign correspondent Burghardt Johnson ("B.J."). Eighteen years before, B.J. left Cat on the eve of her abortion that never was. Now, he's lending by-line cachet to the Sentinel, a historic African-American paper fallen on hard times. The editor and founder's son, Louis, is Cat's best childhood friend and Phoebe's godfather. The Sentinel launches a series of exposes of a sinister syndicate trafficking in illegal aliens forcut-rate big box cleaning contracts and forced prostitution. B.J.'s investigation links Sam to the slumlord who houses the immigrants, and an attempt to enlist Ezola's aid proves disastrous when Cat learns, too late, that Mandeville Maid Services really is too good to be true. Witty and glib, with a cliffhanger ending that seems contrived.