Family drama, love, and romance reside at the heart of A Gardin Wedding, the second installment in Rosey Lee's redemptive, soul-searching series about four Southern Black women who all live in Edin, Ga.
Lee established her well-drawn, multigenerational cast in the first book, The Gardins of Edin, which explored how four biblically named women serve as shareholders in a multimillion-dollar family business, Gardin Family Enterprises, the legacy of their enslaved ancestors. Mary and Martha are sisters, Naomi is a peacekeeping surrogate matriarch to them, and Ruth is a cousin by marriage. Family tension and trust issues have challenged the company, now operated by widowed Ruth, and forced the women to grapple with competing ideas for the business and secrets embedded in their personal and professional lives.
A Gardin Wedding focuses on Martha Gardin, a 38-year-old successful doctor--and a high-strung social climber--who falls for wealthy eligible bachelor Oji Greenwald. When Oji proposes, Martha believes her romantic dreams will now come true. But an emergency befalls Oji's family and the crisis brings out the true colors of the power couple--and emphasizes how Oji's leery mother ostracizes Martha, who feels slighted and left out. The emotional complexities of this messy romantic predicament play out while the Gardin family also opens a new restaurant inside a redevelopment project of Oji's real estate investment company.
Ideas of forgiveness, love, and acceptance are threaded throughout Lee's hopeful, vivid portrayal of complications imbued in contemporary family life. -- Kathleen Gerard, blogger at Reading Between the Lines