Mr. Jefferson’s Piano & Other Central Harlem Stories is an anthology that weaves together a rich tapestry of 68 short stories, agency memos and letters of events that take place during the late seventies, eighties and nineties as seen through Melba Farris’ eyes. Melba writes notes about everything, chronicling her journey into the field of property management as she tries to help her less fortunate brothers and sisters with their housing woes.
She meets the oldest woman in Harlem in the title story Mr. Jefferson’s Piano. 101 year-old, Nora Jefferson and her kid sister, 96-year old Minnie, enchant her with the story of how their father acquired the baby grand that sits in the middle their living room.
In three memos, Just sign the bill, Melba argues against paying a contractor’s invoice after his drunken workers seal a tenant’s live kitten into a wall they replaced.
Gimme that Derby, Melba tries to convince pistol packing, 80 year-old Miss Bea to relocate from a vacant building with no services into a better one. They reach a stalemate until Miss Bea admires the stylish gray derby Melba wears.
The devil made me do it, Melba becomes an exorcist when a routine call about a broken stove turns into removing an invisible devil from Ms. Johns’ oven. In Neisha, Melba writes a series of memos to her boss asking for help to improve the hazardous living conditions of 17 year-old Neisha, an independent minor, her two young children and a teenage brother—all of whom Neisha is responsible for since her mother died of AIDS.
Based on real-life events, these five tales represent some of the delightfully funny, sometimes perplexing but intriguing personalities Betty Wilson met during twenty years as a property manager performing her job duties in city-owned buildings. She took a page from her social activist parents’ community service notebook when she became a Sloan Award winner in 1990 for her excellence in public service.
After the death of a co-worker, Betty decided to write a book about her work in city-owned buildings since it’s where she spent most of her working life. She loved what she was doing. She felt a deep sense of satisfaction giving tenants options for living better. She also met so many intriguing characters in her job as a property manager she felt if she didn’t put pen to paper, she thought they’d be lost in some forgotten memory.
Filled with intriguing characters and their humorous, poignant and sometimes sad stories, it is can’t-stop-
Contact:
Tracey Vandeveer, Owner
Alpha World Press, LLC
920-371-1196
http://www.AlphaWorldPress.com
