Taming It Down Author:Kim McLarin At the heart of this wonderful novel is a young woman trapped between two worlds. Hope Robinson is black, embattled -- and bright enough to win a scholarship to an exclusive prep school. It's an opportunity that comes at a high price; Hope never really feels comfortable in the white community and worries that she has been cut off from her roots.... more » Her struggle to find her place has left her confused, alone, and profoundly angry. Now twenty-eight, a reporter for a Philadelphia newspaper, Hope still clings to her rage. As the novel unfolds, she finds her life spinning out of control, both at work -- where conflicts over affirmative action escalate into outright hostility -- and in her tangled personal life, where she's torn between her relationship with an Afrocentric journalist and her affair with a white man. Finally, overwhelmed by stress, she's driven to a desperate act that ultimately leads her to an understanding that hatred is the most self-destructive of all emotions. Hope tells her story in an articulate, colloquial voice that rings with truth. She's smart, wry, and every bit as unsparing of herself as she is of others; in short, she's a woman any reader can root for -- and as she comes to grips with herself, it's impossible not to feel sympathetic, moved, and uplifted.« less