Loving Her

We had a little problem with the book, but I would use the company again, because of the excellent way they handled it.

I wish there was more to read by this author as I enjoyed this novel tremendously. The realistic prose is perfect for the story and one paragraph flowed into another. I didn't want the story to end. I'd like to call this a romance because it is romantic but it is so much more. The main character, Renay, is so strong when it is so easy to be weak, she has my total admiration. She finds a chance at changing her life for the better and grabs at it. The characters are truly likable and human. They make mistakes and feel pain. They find happiness and you feel their joy. I loved watching the relationship between Renay who is black and Terry who is white develop, grow and change. Just like any relationship the reader could not predict how they would develop. The dialogue is wonderfully written and left me racing from page to page. It didn't put it down until I finished it. I would love to have more books exploring the dynamics of a mixed couple romance. Don't miss this book!

For the time it was published (1974) Loving her was well ahead of its time. The book is as all encompassing as it could be. While not a sexually explicit or edgy book, it is pretty racy. The author explores the interracial relationship between Renay and Terri. Loving Her also explores the coming out of a black lesbian in the 1960's. Moreover, Renay was a black mother taking her child to live with her white lover. Pretty controversial stuff. As another reviewer mentioned to have a black protagonist, a lesbian one at that, was ground breaking. To this day, there are very few (if any) other bw/ww lesbian romance novels or lesbian novels that feature a black female lead. In that respect Loving Her is an extremely valuable piece of literature for the LGBT community.

Although far from perfect, "Loving Her," is indeed a ground-breaking novel...something the other reviewer doesn't seem to grasp. First published in 1974, "Loving Her" is one of the first novels to feature a black lesbian as its primary character. Shockley captures the cruelly mundane, and completely pedestrian reality of american gender politics of 50's and 60's. Given all the Shockley undertook in this novel, I think she can be forgiven for not doing ground-breaking work on inter-racial lesbian relationships. Not the greatest piece of literature ever written, but a classic, indeed.