MADAM, MAY I

A high-end madam revisits her own difficult past when she
decides to follow her dreams and face her ambivalence toward her life choices.

Thirty years after her mother’s death, Desdemona Dean wakes up
bored and weary. As a high-end madam, she has every material thing she wants,
but nothing makes her happy. She cares about her employees and makes sure
they’re safe from violence and legal risk, but the older she gets, the more she
wonders why she’s still in the game. Her life is so filled with secrecy she’s
never had a friend, and no one knows her real name. “There was no part of her
life that felt complete.” When Desi decides to further her education, she
connects with Loren, a tutor who’s a decade younger, and she finds herself
charmed by his positivity, gratitude, and sense of possibility. They enter into
a sexual relationship—which starts when she offers to tutor him with her own
expertise—that is ultimately derailed when she convinces herself that their
differences are too complicated even as she begins to ask herself what will
make her happy and makes life changes influenced by his worldview. As she does,
she looks back at her life, honoring her strengths and re-evaluating her
measures of success, making choices which may lead her back to love and
self-respect. Bryant opens up her book with a young Desi holding a Tickle Me
Elmo in 1988, an impossibility since the product launched in 1996 yet a
good prop for the scene. Much of the book is like this—not quite perfect yet
compelling nonetheless, and where Bryant’s writing sometimes lacks polish,
Desi’s thought-provoking backstory and transformation keep the reader engaged
and sympathetic.

The heroine is the hook, and she rocks it.