Full Circle

 Rural Virginia, 1958:    "For a Saturday night it was quiet, even for Slocum, a place Buddy thought no one in their right mind would choose to be."

    Educated by years of domestic chaos, the Taylor children must adapt after their mother is shot by their father.  Clarence, the new head of the family at twenty-two, steals a moving van and smuggles them from their rural Virginia home to a life in Baltimore, a monumental challenge for a Black family in the 1950s. 

   Though society conspires against them, the Taylor children are not without allies:  Leo and Anna Antanucci are the owners of the moving company where  Clarence Taylor works.   Leo and Anna, alone and banished from their own families, have struggled to start their business and family, when a moving van filled with five children is unexpectedly unloaded on their doorstep.

   Buddy, Cherise, Billy, Roy and Otis learn how to survive - and thrive - in a turbulent 1960s and 70s Baltimore, while Leo and Anna find the family they had been denied.   The extended Taylor/Antanucci family makes their way through the many triumphs and tragedies thrown their way.  

   Cherise, the Taylor family prodigy, finds professional success in adulthood, but ultimately realizes that her life is not complete.  She takes a page from Leo and Anna and works to sponsor and bring a semi-orphaned family from Iraq to Baltimore, smuggling them over the border not in a moving truck but a mini-van.  

   Full Circle explores issues of race and national identity, gender equality, and the ultimate triumph of love and gratitude in a hard world.  

    You will come to love the characters and miss them terribly when you finish the last page.