I’ve been blessed in being part of a supportive writers’ critique group comprised of accomplished writers. Over the past five years, we’ve met once a month at a local restaurant. Our numbers have fluctuated between four to six writers with work in progress. But things don’t always work out the way we would like them to. Life happens. We have other pressing needs besides our writing.

With our active members now down to two of us, we’ve begun frequenting the Monday Night Fiction Workshop held at Beyond Baroque, a Literary | Arts Center in Venice, Los Angeles County. As I struggle with the first draft of my current writing project, I’ve found the fresh voices stimulating and motivating to keep pressing forward.

Instead of a third novel, to be set in Brazil, as planned, I’ve decided to explore the theme of the woman as a social construct. The minority male elite–not forgetting the women who support them–who control our global capitalist economic system are leading the human species, along with non-human species, towards extinction. Women play a vital role in maintaining the profitability of this system. If we are to reverse course, the role of women in society urgently needs to be re-examined.

While we’ve made lots of progress over the decades, women in America remain far from being treated as equals before the God in whom our nation has placed its trust. On February 21, 2020, I learned that five Republican attorneys general in Alabama, Louisiana, Nebraska, South Dakota, and Tennessee are seeking to block an effort by three Democratic-led states to see the Equal Rights Amendment (ERA) adopted in the U.S. Constitution.

Amid the gloom, I received news of another Five-Star Review on Amazon. This one is from American author, Dan McNay, who lives in Los Angeles, Southern California.

More Praise for Under the Tamarind Tree: A Novel by Rosaliene Bacchus

5.0 out of 5 stars Fantastic Book
February 15, 2020
Format: Kindle Edition

Under The Tamarind Tree by Rosaliene Bacchus. Published by Lulu 2019 is sweeping grand drama about Richard Cheong’s life set against the troubled history of Guyana gaining its freedom from Great Britain. We are quickly drawn into Richard’s life in 1950 with the birth of his first child. He is the good father, fighting against the times and convoluted half hidden histories of an extended family and the sad efforts of his parents and siblings to even act like decent human beings. He survives and takes care of those he loves without help from anyone, including a wife he loves and loses and distant sisters who have no patience for him. His trials are a reflection of the world around him in the emerging nation, with all of its political and racial violence and plots and demons racing the streets to destroy them. He will succeed and survive in the end because that is all he knows, even though he is also driven by demons of his own.
We are given the wonderfully exotic world of Guyana and its cultural diversity and incredible mix of ethnicity and religion. And it is alive and teems about the reader like a maelstrom of a fantastic world. This book is a joy to read and it will make you cry, so beware. I guarantee you won’t want to put it down.
~ Author Dan McNay, Los Angeles, California, USA

Richard Cheong believed that he had control over his life; that everything would work out according to his plans. But the changing world outside his home upended his dreams.

---

Dear Reader, my debut novel, Under the Tamarind Tree, is available at Rosaliene’s Store on Lulu.com and other book retailers at Amazon, BAM! Book-A-Million, Barnes and Noble, Book Depository, and Indie Bound.

Learn more about Under the Tamarind Tree at Rosaliene’s writer’s website.