REVIEW: Family & Other Calamities by Leslie Gray Streeter

JayneB Reviews / Book ReviewsBaltimore / Contemporary / estranged family / interracial marriage / journalist / older MCs / POC / POC author / self discoveryNo Comments

A successful journalist returns to her hometown just as her biggest mistake becomes headline news in this vibrant, funny, and heartfelt novel about facing the past, and its secrets, head-on.

Entertainment journalist Dawn Roberts has a lot to work through: a widow’s grief, betrayals of family and friends, and scandals that almost tanked her reputation. Not that Dawn dwells on the past. Well, hardly. When she returns to Baltimore with her husband’s ashes, she can’t avoid it. In fact, she’s diving into decades of backstabbing and treachery for her first trip home in years.

She’s looking at you, Joe Perkins. Her former mentor, whose explosive exposé about big-city corruption is being turned into a slanderous movie, is also back in town. The villain of the piece? Dawn. The good news is that this could all be a chance to reset—heal family wounds, admit to her own mistakes, and maybe even reconnect with the one who got away. Oh, and get even with Joe any way she can.

With the surprising help of an up-and-coming journalist and a legendary R & B diva, Dawn will finally set the record straight. Returning home might just be the biggest story in Dawn’s life, a fresh start—and happy ending—she never expected.

Dear Ms. Gray Streeter,

I’ve been reading a lot of books with older main characters lately. No, it can’t possibly be because I’m getting older, too. From the blurb it sounds like Dawn has a whole bunch of stuff going on in her life and will need to face her past, discover some home truths, and set things straight.

Dawn spends a lot of the first part of the book getting on my last nerve. I totally get that she’s a strong woman who has had to fight for her chances, who has had to overcome opinions about her as a Black woman in journalism, and whose journalistic calling has made her a woman unafraid to ask probing questions and keep hammering home until she gets answers. But she’s also an expert at stepping on the toes of people who appear to be trying to help her and or are related to her. More than once I silently urged her to hush and stop aggravating the people on her side. When you’re deep in a hole, think about putting the shovel down.

Yet that wouldn’t be Dawn. From her early discovery that being a journalist allows you to ask hard questions, make people upset, and control things, Dawn found her calling. Working twice as hard to be thought half as good, she’s pushed for chances, grabbed opportunities and not let go. Then Life happens, some bad choices are made and she has the next thirty years of her life to ignore her regret. Now Fate comes calling as she returns home to face her neglected family and the in-laws she kinda/sorta didn’t push to keep in touch with even after the too early death of her husband. Some of her issues really are her own fault.

She finds though, that it’s not too late to face her own (at times egregious) failings and make amends. This, of course, takes most of the book to reach so readers need to strap themselves in as Dawn learns all this. Watching her be stubborn and (yes) more than a little self-centered for a while makes her self realization all the more satisfying. Dawn gets pushed (with a bit of help from herself) into a corner by events from the past and the way she’s treated some people. When someone tries to push her dead husband’s reputation there with her, that’s when she comes out swinging – yes, for her but also because this someone tries to make Dale into a sleaze and Dawn isn’t going to stand for that shit.

Dawn has a habit of speaking first – interrupting first in many cases – as she seeks to reveal the truth. She isn’t going to steal the things that someone else actually did – she just wants her credit and her due. Still I don’t mind that more than a few people call her out on her single-minded approach and the damage that she sometimes leaves in her wake.

There are lots of great characters to enjoy over the course of Dawn’s journey and some of them also need to take a hard look at things they’ve done and believed. Dawn’s family are fantastic, especially her mother who is fabulous and a mother – and we all know how mothers can both see us and love us despite our mistakes. Aunt Weedie is a hoot, too. Bria James takes no prisoners as she and Dawn discuss (ahem) Gen X vs Gen Z and the pathways that Gen Zers have to forge and invent for themselves now that things Gen Xers used are no longer a thing.

The penultimate scene (I would love to be at this party) might be a little too movie perfect with its many “just in time and on camera, too” revelations but after what Dawn tells her lawyer she wants and more importantly what she isn’t after, I’ll happily take it. Dawn’s seen her mistakes, owned them, and made amends and that gives me the character growth I love to see. B

~Jayne

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