"Last Night"

Karen Ellis is a pseudonym of author Katia Lief. She is a member of Mystery Writers of America, International Thriller Writers and The Authors Guild. She lives with her family in Brooklyn, NY.

She applied the Page 69 Test to her new novel, Last Night, and reported the following:

If you open to page 69 of Last Night you’ll find yourself in an abandoned warehouse in Red Hook, Brooklyn with my three favorite characters in this novel. It’s the night of high school graduation for Crisp and Glynnie, who visit with twelve-year-old weed dealer JJ. Crisp has just asked JJ, “How’d you get to be homeless?” and the boy has described how his Haitian parents were deported and he cycled through miserable foster families.

“That’s when I moved in here,” JJ tells them. “No one bothers me. I get good grades. A lot of food gets tossed in the dumpster by Fairway every night. For pocket money, I do a little selling for Big Man.”

Cossetted and entitled Glynnie, who has been JJ’s incurious customer for a while, finally wakes up to his plight.

Glynnie pivots to her knees, throws her arms around JJ, slight, bony, skin so soft, and whispers, “It’s okay.” Why did she never think to ask him that question: “Why are you homeless?” Now, she knows that he’s not ‘JJ, her kid dealer’ but ‘Janjak St. Fleur, beloved son of Ester and Kervens.’ Homeless, abused, neglected, surviving by his wits.

This is the moment when Crisp, biracial and himself fatherless and keenly aware of JJ’s challenges, makes the crucial decision to help JJ—a decision that fuels the story as it unfolds through the hours of a long and treacherous night.

Visit Karen Ellis's website.

--Marshal Zeringue