Episode 31 -- Chaste Heat and Sweet Potato Pie: Beverly Jenkins' JOSEPHINE

For this, our first foray into the romance novel genre, we went in craving a bodice ripper, but ended up with teenage dress mending -- only a little less hot. However, we must admit that the results of our reading of the great Beverly Jenkins' YA novel, Josephine, were more than satisfying! In this episode we discuss antebellum Michigan and the small town of Whittaker, where all the men have left to fight in the Civil War and the women have been left to fend for themselves. When a group of injured soldiers arrives to convalesce at the town's boarding house, I think we all know what comes next: intense courting! Respectable socializing! Thoughts of kissing! Heteronormativity! And choices, choices . . . As you might expect, this turns out to be a delightfully raucous episode with lots of puns, nervous laughter, and an overdose of food metaphors. Check it out!