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About The Book

With this sensual, heartrending second novel, bestselling author Jenoyne Adams further establishes herself as a stunning talent. Probing and engaging, Selah's Bed explores how a woman can use sex to gain acceptance, escape her past, and even endanger her soul.
Selah Wells looks for salvation through sex and in her photography of nude black men. She feels most alive under the touch of new hands. But she's married to a minister, and, as the adage goes, secrets done in the dark will come to the light. Interweaving scenes from Selah's adult life, including the loss of her only child, and moments from her childhood -- spent in a lively housing project -- Adams deftly depicts Selah's journey. As her grandmother's health deteriorates and her husband immerses himself in the work of God, Selah's latest lover, Peter, tries to get her to confront her fear and anger. Unable to relinquish regrets that have fueled her behavior all these years, Selah resists. But when she is pushed to the emotional brink by an unexpected turn of events, she must finally face her past and begin to make peace with God, her husband, her lost child, and herself.

About The Author

Photo Credit: Pablo Aguilar

Jenoyne Adams is a writer, poet, and dancer, as well as a 1998 PEN Center USA West Emerging Voices Fellow. She lives in Los Angeles with her husband, writer Michael Datcher.

Product Details

  • Publisher: Free Press (April 15, 2004)
  • Length: 256 pages
  • ISBN13: 9780671787844

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Raves and Reviews

Black Issues Book Review A moving story of a woman trying to find herself and begin the process of reconciliation and forgiveness. ...Powerful, vivid characters.

Janet Fitch bestselling author of White Oleander Jenoyne Adams writes with raw beauty about the life of the body and life in terms of the body....You read this prose with a visceral pleasure; it bites into your flesh, burns your fingers, your lips. A ravishing, erotic, furious tale.

Jervey Tervalon author of Lita In a time when the dully erotic passes as literature, Selah's Bed is a novel of elliptical sensuality. Powerful and compelling.

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