In Sheep's Clothing

Library Journal

On her last day working at her father's liquor store, 28-year-old Trudy Bell is forced to perform a sex act on a gun-wielding thug. This traumatic experience is kept secret as Trudy hopes a new job at a San Jose, CA, travel agency will be her ticket out of her crime-ridden neighborhood. Like other characters in Monroe's best-selling novels (God Don't Like Ugly; Red Light Wives), Trudy faces daunting odds as a low-income woman of color with ambition and an unfair share of troubles. Postponing marriage to her safe but dull fianc , Trudy throws herself into her secretarial job, developing a love/hate relationship with her supervisor, a self-satisfied black woman who alternately mentors and humiliates her. Trudy retaliates by sneaking lunches and making personal purchases on the supervisor's business credit cards, but her risk taking quickly spirals out of control. Narrated by Trudy in girlfriend-to-girlfriend style, Monroe's latest deals with race, class, and gender issues, which makes it more than just a cautionary tale about identity theft. Monroe's latest is recommended for popular fiction collections where African American authors are in demand.-Laurie A. Cavanaugh, Brockton P.L., MA Copyright 2005 Reed Business Information.