The novel, “October Suite,” by the versatile author Maxine Clair, is an animated coming-of-age story dealing with the struggle a young woman has to go through to make her own place in the world that is separate from the ghastly reputation her family has made.

It takes place in Kansas, 1950—a time when socio-political laws prevented African-American female teachers from getting married.

The 23-year-old October Brown is pursued by an unhappily married handyman, James Wilson. She falls in love and inadvertently becomes pregnant.

When Wilson finds out, he immediately leaves October alone to swallow the denial, shame and in jeopardy of losing her job.

October must travel back home to Ohio to give birth while dodging the moral scrutiny from the residents of Wyandotte County.

In Ohio, her older sister Vergie comforts her along with her aunts, Maude and Frances, who raised the girls after their father killed their mother.

October gives birth to her son David and then tries to fathom how she will be able to afford to raise the child as a single mother.

Vergie and her husband Gene tell October they will care for David under the condition that he becomes their son. Numb with desperation, October agrees without realizing what has truly been dealt to her.

Returning to Kansas, October begins to reclaim her dignity and professionalism. She purchases a two-bedroom house with space for her baby. Her efforts to get David back and fill the void within her ignites a bitter struggle with Vergie, which unearths issues the sisters have surrounding their violent parental past.

Written about an era when African-Americans were fighting to be heard, October Brown is in search of her voice. Although the novel is set 50 years ago, many students on this campus can relate to Brown’s struggle of self-realization.

At age 23, the sky is the limit for October and her desire to be understood and revered in society. Though emotions often divert October from a conventional life, she grasps the concept that things can be right without being perfect.

Clair, like October, was born and raised in Kansas City where she became a single mother of four children. For many years she served as the chief medical technologist at the Children’s Medical Center in Washington, D.C., but experienced an internal question: “Is this all?”

She made the decision to take the leap and have a mid-life career change. “I have come to believe that you cannot have a heart’s desire that cannot be achieved,” said Clair. So she decided to do something artful with language and to stand up and say something.

Clair has also written “Coping With Gravity,” a collection of poems, and “Rattlebone,” a collection of short stories which won the Chicago Tribune’s Heartland Prize for fiction. “October Suite” won Baltimore’s Artscape Prize. October Brown is one of the characters from “Rattlebone.”

This novel has a baseline melody of harmonious riffs that compose the soundtrack to so many of our lives with compelling threads of spirituality and culture from a universal timelessness. The personality and diction used in the story will leave you speaking to and even worrying about characters throughout the plot.