She has received numerous awards including the Golden Pen Award for Best Inspirational Fiction and the Phyllis Wheatley Trailblazer Award for being a pioneer in African American Christian Fiction. In 2008, she won the African American
Literary Award for Best Novel (Too Little, Too Late), and Female Author of the Year.
Now in her latest emotionally charged and inspiring novel, “Never Say Never” a passionate and dangerous love affair threatens to destroy both a marriage and a friendship.
When Miriam’s fireman husband, Chauncey, dies in a school fire, Miriam feels like her life is over. How is she going to raise her three children all by herself? How will she survive without the love of her life? Murray said events following 9/11 inspired her latest novel. “I’d read about the situation in the New York Times and it even became a Law & Order episode. The situations— several of the firemen, who survived the WTC collapse, were leaving their wives for their friends (who died) widows. I wanted to explore that story with my own twists.
Luckily, Miriam’s sister-friend Emily, who is white— and Emily’s husband, Jamal— are there to comfort her. Jamal was Chauncey’s best friend and is happy to step in and help Miriam with the funeral and her children, and he gives her hope that she has a future. However, all the time that they spend together— grieving, sharing and reminiscing—brings the two closer in ways they never planned, and they soon find themselves in the middle of a heated affair.
Lost in the fog of grief and lust, neither is even sure if their passionate affair is real. While Jamal is filled with guilt, sure that this new relationship is all about loss, Miriam believes that she is in love. But then, Emily finds out, and Emily and Jamal have to deal with this woman scorned— and her hunger for revenge. In this tangle of love, longing, and loyalty, can any of the relationships survive?
Victoria Christopher Murray will appear at the Orleans Branch of The Enoch Pratt Free Library located at 1303 Orleans Street in Baltimore on Tuesday, June 11, 2013 at 6:30 p.m.
For more information about “Never Say Never,” visit: www.VictoriaChristopherMurray.com and www.simoneandschuster.com.