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Following her 2024 debut, ALL WE WERE PROMISED, Ashton Lattimore introduces Lena Jameson. Youthful Lena had earned her sea legs when her dad, Earl, let her steer the Honeysuckle on fishing trips. At age 23, Lena takes on the responsibilities of managing a household and the family-owned Clam Shack in the gender and race inequity of segregated Martha’s Vineyard during 1923’s Prohibition era.
"An unapologetic feminist current courses through RUNNER like the Gulf Stream. Thriller, suspense and surprise mystery aspects are embedded in this laudable work of historical fiction."
Lena poignantly realizes that her rum-running father was more sinner than saint after he and his crew die in a suspicious shipwreck. Her brother, Walter, is a gadabout who sails his ship in a contraband bottle of bootlegged booze. As for her mom, “Sarah was all strength and focus, right up to the moment she wasn’t.” Delinquent mortgage payments and property taxes force chameleon Lena to become a rumrunner. “Ain’t no shame in trying to take care of family.”
Due to the sea claiming Earl, there’s only a memorial service, after which Dee Brooks from Boston snags a printed eulogy and obit that omits key factors of his life. Dee is challenged by locating accommodations since “rooming houses that took in colored guests in Oak Bluffs could be counted on one hand with fingers to spare.”
Lena assembles a motley crew consisting of Walt, sometimes-boyfriend Sam, and Dee. After a near-profitless haul of hooch for local guesthouses, Lena and crew branch out to gangland Boston and the Jazz Age of Harlem. They encounter trouble at each turn: gangster ambushes, a competitor rumrunner ramming their vessel, and authorities invoking the 1919 Volstead Act to ransack the Clam Shack.
When Lena and Dee are about to accept defeat, powerful women guide them to success. “But as ever, a woman had stepped into the gap where a man had failed.”
An unapologetic feminist current courses through RUNNER like the Gulf Stream. Thriller, suspense and surprise mystery aspects are embedded in this laudable work of historical fiction.
Teaser
Martha’s Vineyard, 1923. The sea was the gift that kept on giving to Lena Jameson’s father, Earl, a fisherman turned successful rumrunner who built up a small fortune smuggling liquor from offshore ships to thirsty customers back on the island. But when Earl and his entire crew are lost in a mysterious shipwreck that some whisper was no accident, his loved ones are left reeling and penniless. And Lena, who had been on the cusp of a college career in Boston, sees her future slipping away. Desperate to save her family, as well as her own hopes of escaping their small town, Lena decides to take over Earl’s rum-running business. But as buried secrets rise to the surface and the temptations of the glittering underworld pull Lena in deeper, everything she’s fought to protect soon hangs in the balance.
Promo
Martha’s Vineyard, 1923. The sea was the gift that kept on giving to Lena Jameson’s father, Earl, a fisherman turned successful rumrunner who built up a small fortune smuggling liquor from offshore ships to thirsty customers back on the island. But when Earl and his entire crew are lost in a mysterious shipwreck that some whisper was no accident, his loved ones are left reeling and penniless. And Lena, who had been on the cusp of a college career in Boston, sees her future slipping away. Desperate to save her family, as well as her own hopes of escaping their small town, Lena decides to take over Earl’s rum-running business. But as buried secrets rise to the surface and the temptations of the glittering underworld pull Lena in deeper, everything she’s fought to protect soon hangs in the balance.
About the Book
In this gripping, emotionally layered novel set in Prohibition-era Martha’s Vineyard, a young woman from a Black seafaring family plunges into the dangerous world of rum-running to save her home and uncover the truth about her father’s death.
Martha’s Vineyard, 1923. The sea was the gift that kept on giving to Lena Jameson’s father, Earl, a fisherman turned successful rumrunner who built up a small fortune smuggling liquor from offshore ships to thirsty customers back on the island. But when Earl and his entire crew are lost in a mysterious shipwreck that some whisper was no accident, his loved ones are left reeling and penniless. And Lena, who had been on the cusp of a college career in Boston, sees her future slipping away.
Desperate to save her family, as well as her own hopes of escaping their small town, Lena decides to take over Earl’s rum-running business. For a crew, she ropes in Walter, her roguish big brother who leans too hard on the bottle; Sam, her steadfast local boyfriend who wants to keep her tethered to shore; and Dee, a glamorous young woman from Boston who is summering in the Vineyard and offers Lena a glimpse of the future that she still wants for herself --- and who’s keeping her own explosive secret.
The foursome embarks on a journey from the quaint, colorful streets of Oak Bluffs through gangland Boston to the jazz-filled clubs of Harlem during its Renaissance, all in search of quick money --- and the truth about the shipwreck. But as buried secrets rise to the surface and the temptations of the glittering underworld pull Lena in deeper, everything she’s fought to protect soon hangs in the balance: her heart, her family, and her place in a world that’s quick to condemn women who dare to want more.
Audiobook available, read by A'rese Emokpae
