By Freddie Lee Johnson III

An African-American professor faces an onslaught of troubles in his personal and professional life in Johnson’s follow-up to his debut, Bittersweet. Darius Collins’s existence is an ongoing exercise in crisis management-his girlfriend dumps him as the novel opens, his relationship with his ex-wife amounts to a series of bitter skirmishes and he’s thrust into the middle of some nasty racial politics at his Cleveland college when a group of students tries to enlist his support in bringing a notoriously anti-Semitic African-American leader to speak at the school. Life goes completely haywire, though, when his adolescent son, Jarrod, is accused of rape and Collins learns that his ex-wife is a former lover of the corrupt politician who is trying to frame the boy.