Black Coffee FROM THE PUBLISHER
“I may be a supersoldier but I sure as hell ain’t no Superwoman. Yes, it’s true my hand is steady, I have the eye of a marksman, and I can hit a moving target dead center at four hundred meters, but when it comes to making clever love decisions, I’m not the sharpest knife in the drawer. While I look pretty lofty in my spit-shined combat boots and razor-sharp battle dress uniform, like a lot of young sisters from the ’hood, I’ve taken a few wrong turns down the back alleys of life.”
Meet Sergeant Sanderella Coffee, who has just completed a three-year overseas tour and is now reporting to a military installation in Virginia. She is a single mother whose goal is to attend the Army’s prestigious Officer Candidate School, which will guarantee a better life for her and her children.
Sandie meets a man who matches her ambition and determination step for step in the form of Drill Sergeant Romulus Caesar, who literally marches into her life and turns it upside down. They fall in love, and Rom is everything Sandie could want—supportive, confident, self-reliant—but he’s also married. Because of the military’s tough policy on fraternization and adultery, Sandie could find her carefully orchestrated career slipping away like sand in a breeze.
SYNOPSIS
A hard charging, take-no-stuff, hilariously sassy sistah from the �hood, Sanderella Coffee is nobody�s Private Benjamin. An around-the-way girl who has taken a few wrong turns down the back alleys of life, Sandie finds herself employed as the ultimate bullet stopper: and enlisted soldier in the United States Army. With spirited determination and a married lover who professes his everlasting support, Sandie marches through the mire to take on Uncle Sam, but will the love of her life prove to be an asset? Or will her love for him become the stumbling block upon which she must abandon her hopes and dreams?
FROM THE CRITICS
Publishers Weekly
Rough, ready and thoroughly raunchy, this previously self-published military romance puts a literal spin on the war between the sexes. Sparks fly when sergeants Sanderella Coffee and Romulus Caesar, two black soldiers rising through the ranks in the military, first meet in Virginia, where Sandie is training to apply to Officer Candidate School. Romulus is an unhappily married drill sergeant who dreams of escaping his stale marriage, but is held back by the love and responsibility he feels for his twin sons. Sandie is a single mom with three children, determined to advance her military career, battling sexism and self-doubt with her quick wit and urban wisdom. Their romance is a rocky one from the beginning because of the army's tough policy on fraternization (that Romulus is cheating on his wife to be with Sandie doesn't help), but theirs is a meeting of body and soul, and even army disapproval can't keep them apart. They enjoy great sex, which the author describes in graphic detail, and they both share the same no-nonsense outlook on life. Price-Thompson's inventive, colloquial prose gives the novel swing and cadence, though she sometimes veers into parody ("Antoine was a cute dark-chocolate 'Bama slammer, my afternoon delight and midnight snack, my ever-ready Freddie"), and her eyes-wide-open perspective on army life and love is refreshing. As the title suggests, this is not a light-hearted, sweet-talking love story, but an energizing slice of ultracontemporary romance. 5-city author tour. (Jan.) Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information.
Kirkus Reviews
A Desert Storm veteran's amateurish and overwritten, if not without a certain rakish appeal, first novel-about African-Americans in the military-pulls few punches in depicting the tribulations of First Lieutenant Sanderella Coffee.
WHAT PEOPLE ARE SAYING
Price-Thompson's is a voice that needs to be heard, Refreshing and tastefully charismatic, its a kind of street-real that only a person who has witnessed it can relay. (Camika Spencer, author of When All Hell Breaks Loose)
— Camika Spencer
If you’re ready for an adventure that will take you though the psyche of not only the female heart but interestingly enough the male mind as well, you will love Black Coffee. Rarely does an author move me to say such things, but in Tracy Price-Thompson I have found that just like black coffee her writing is truly addictive and good to the last drop. (Timmothy McCann, author of Until....)
— Timmothy McCann
Linda Dominique Grosvenor, author of Sometimes I Cry, and Like Boogie on Tuesday:
A feisty cast of characters and a wit-slinging ride from a refreshing new perspective. Price-Thompson gives us a vivid 3-D reading that you can truly sink your literary teeth into...
— Linda Dominique Grosvenor
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