Overview

Two lives spiral into a fatal pas de deux during a weekend of sex, alcohol, and violence--from the acclaimed author of the Harlem Detectives series Jesse Robinson and Kriss Cummings once shared a passionate weekend in Chicago, but it's been years since they've seen each other. Jesse, a black writer, refuses to pen the inspirational novel his agent wants, and sits in his Harlem tenement as his career plummets accordingly. Kriss, a white divorcee, has found moderate success at her office job, but is disillusioned with life. Often sleeping with black men, she's pilloried for ""solving the Negro Problem in bed."" Each of them lonely and embittered by the racial tensions of McCarthy-era America, they reunite for a whiskey-soaked weekend in 1952, spiraling into a violent, malicious pas de deux that is fated to end in destruction. Contains mature themes.

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Chester Himes began his writing career while serving in the Ohio State Penitentiary for armed robbery from 1929 to 1936. From his first novel, If He Hollers Let Him Go, Himes dealt with the social and psychological repercussions of being black in a white-dominated society. Beginning in 1953, Himes moved to Europe, where he met and was strongly influenced by Richard Wright. It was in France that he began his best-known series of crime novels-including Cotton Comes to Harlem-featuring two Harlem policemen. As with Himes's earlier work, the series is characterized by violence and grisly, sardonic humor. He died in Spain in 1984. Ron Butler is a Los Angeles-based actor and voice artist with over a hundred film and television credits (playing everything from brooding doctors to screwball hipsters). Most kids will recognize him from the three seasons he spent on Nickelodeon's True Jackson, VP. Ron works regularly as a commercial and animation voice-over artist and has voiced a wide variety of audiobooks. He is a member of the Atlantic Theater Company and an Independent Filmmaker Project Award winner for his work in the HBO film Everyday People. Originally from the Bahamas, Ron grew up singing calypso onstage with his father (the country's number-one recording artist) before touring (and recording) in Europe with a jazz band. In his spare time, he impersonates the president while playing the ukulele.

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