| REVIEWED BY FROST |

| "Prologue: The Story of Cassandra Jasmine Houston" by Crystal Ordonez |
| Rating: 5 Swords Prologue: The Story of Cassandra Jasmine Houston Crystal Ordonez August 2oo7 7o pp. Contemporary/Drama www.lulu.com/crystalordonez 5 Swords Twelve-year-old Cassandra Houston has been a writer since the age of two, and it is writing, and books, that will prove over and over again to be her emotional salvation. Soon after she and her father Raymond move from a tiny Texas town to Chicago for his work as an English professor at the esteemed University of Chicago, Cass witnesses the death of a child in a hit-and-run. Her introduction to the Big City is ugly, but into a fictional setting she frames it. Fiction is her way of understanding her world. In addition to the enormous changes between small-town Texas and the Northern metropolis, Cass finds herself dealing with serious physical changes most women don't encounter until middle age, and surgery. Emotional trauma is headed her way also, reawakening the pains of losing her mother right after birth, when Cass was left with her father Raymond and her grandparents, never to know her mother. Nor will that loss be the last of her life, as the young girl seems destined to learn through suffering an education in living that will find its place in the pages of her fiction. Prologue: The Story of Cassandra Jasmine Houston will have readers pondering the increasing depths of character to which prolific author Crystal Ordonez is lately delving in her works. As a background to the stories of Cassandra Houston O'Keeffe, erotica author, Prologue delivers a fine understanding and will impel long-time readers to return to the Houston/O'Keeffe novels and novellas for a welcome rereading. May Cassandra Houston and her kin and in-laws continue to entertain and enlighten us for many, many years to come. If you would like to be Reviewed by Frost, send an email to frost@jlfoster.biz or reviewed_by_frost@jlfoster.biz with the subject line "Submission." Include the author's name, title of book, publishing house, genre, page count, and an excerpt. |
