A successful journalist returns to her hometown just as her biggest mistake becomes headline news in this vibrant, funny, and heartfelt novel about facing the past, and its secrets, head-on.
Intrigued? Read on to discover the synopsis and an excerpt from Leslie Gray Streeter’s Family & Other Calamities, which is out June 1st 2025.
Entertainment journalist Dawn Roberts has a lot to work through: a widow’s grief, betrayals of family and friends, and scandals that almost tanked her reputation. Not that Dawn dwells on the past. Well, hardly. When she returns to Baltimore with her husband’s ashes, she can’t avoid it. In fact, she’s diving into decades of backstabbing and treachery for her first trip home in years.
She’s looking at you, Joe Perkins. Her former mentor, whose explosive exposé about big-city corruption is being turned into a slanderous movie, is also back in town. The villain of the piece? Dawn. The good news is that this could all be a chance to reset―heal family wounds, admit to her own mistakes, and maybe even reconnect with the one who got away. Oh, and get even with Joe any way she can.
With the surprising help of an up-and-coming journalist and a legendary R & B diva, Dawn will finally set the record straight. Returning home might just be the biggest story in Dawn’s life, a fresh start―and happy ending―she never expected.
CHAPTER 4 from FAMILY & OTHER CALAMITIES
Your Cats Hate You
It’s 3:46 a.m. My cats, George Michael and Andrew Wham!, are mad the alarm keeps waking them, and they are staring at me like “Lady who brings us the food! What’s that noise?”
Groggy, I roll over, hoping I haven’t woken Dale up. And then I remember.
I can’t wake Dale up because Dale is dead.
“I know, I know. That man would have fed you by now,” I tell them. “At least you don’t have to take Daddy’s ashes back to Baltimore for his brother to bury.” They don’t appear to be moved.
My phone buzzes. A text from my sister, Tonya. Hey girl. What’s your flight number again?
I told her this already, so I’m tempted to ignore it. But since I’m up now, I give her a call.
“I just need your flight number—you didn’t need to call,” says my sister from a place where the sun is already up.
“Sure,” I said. “My flight is United 1701.”
Tonya pauses dramatically. It’s too early for drama in either time zone.
“WHAT?” I yell.
“Nothing,” she says hurriedly. “Just making sure. It’s early.”
“Even earlier here,” I grouse, narrowly dodging George Michael’s claw aimed at my neck. “What’s your problem?”
She snorts. “It’s not like you type well. Just clarifying so you can’t blame me if I pick you up late. You’re historically unreliable.”
And there’s the dig. My sister and I get along well, considering one party blames the other for fleeing town for a man. Also, maybe the fleeing party had something to do with the first party’s boyfriend going to jail for fraud? Who knows?
It could have been anything, really.
I’ve had a good excuse for delaying this trip—excuses, plural. First, there was the pandemic: Dale died in 2021, and I didn’t want to fly cross-country and get coughed on or punched out in a wild plane fight. It’s not like I go home a lot anyway. Our initial move to the West Coast can be best described as . . . abrupt, and the next time I came back, both Dale and I were marrying someone our parents had never met, just like in a rom-com. But in the real-life version, no one pretends it’s cute.
It was awkward for sure, and most everyone came to love each other over the years, with one notable exception. But the way I left town has always been a sore spot with my sister and me, and with work getting busy for us both, our planned twice-yearly visits after the wedding eventually became one, if that.
“Maybe if you had grandchildren for us to meet, you’d come more often,” my daddy said once and then changed the subject because he knew that wasn’t a thing he was supposed to say out loud. It burned. I loved him enough not to tell him and eat that acid burn in my chest silently.
We never had those grandkids, another thing for me to feel guilty about. And unfortunately, I can’t delay this trip any longer for the worst reason. Dale’s ashes—at least the half that’s in the urn I’m taking with me and not the half that’s in a Baltimore Orioles piggy bank on my bookcase in LA—are going to be interred in the family mausoleum along with his mother, Diane, who died not long after he did. I don’t love his brother, Brent, but he asked me to bring Dale home, and I’m not petty enough to play games with ashes.
Here on the phone, it’s quiet and uncomfortable, and I want to hang up, but someone has to speak, I guess.
“Maybe I’ll fake a disease and not come at all.”
“Oh, please. You can’t mail ashes.”
Tonya doesn’t know that I have actually rehearsed wrapping this urn up in all the bubble wrap they have at the UPS Store and sending it on its way. I must hand deliver the ashes to Brent, who has never been my biggest fan. I wouldn’t put it past him to run tests on the ashes to make sure they aren’t really burned paint chips or Cheetos dust.
It’s too early for this conversation, so I’m ending it.
“Now you know when my flight is,” I say. “See you there. Don’t be late. And thank you!”
She is confused by my politeness.
“Oh, OK,” she says. “I’m going to be down there in Catonsville near the airport for work. Mrs. Mason—you know, Tammy’s mother? She’s refinancing, and she wants to talk about me being her broker.”
“Oh her! Didn’t she have Black lawn jockeys at some point?”
Tonya snorts. “Yeah, she did. But I can rise above. I’m a professional.”
“A professional what, though?”
We both laugh, and just like that, we’re cool again. Mostly.
“Listen, girl, let me get out of here,” I say. “I have no idea how busy LAX is gonna be, or how weird the flight is going to be. People don’t know how to act these days.”
“Don’t be nervous. I’m sure this won’t be one of those situations where somebody trips a flight attendant, or where none of the pilots shows up and y’all get rerouted to Idaho. Don’t worry about it. You’ll be up in First Class with all the ballers,” Tonya says. “Even if something happens, you wouldn’t notice with all the free champagne and extra blankets.”
“You say that like it’s a bad thing.” I laugh. “I haven’t flown in years. I deserve it.”
Tonya scoffs.
“You always get what you deserve, I guess,” she says, and hangs up.
Is it really early, or did that sound ominous? I start throwing stuff into my ridiculously nice suitcase, the one Dale bought me for our last anniversary. He was very sick and knew he wasn’t going to be taking any more vacations, but it seemed important to him to give it to me.
“You’re trying to encourage me to move on, but I don’t want to move on anywhere you’re not going,” I’d said, wiping an angry tear from my cheek. I don’t know if I was madder at cancer or at Dale for having it. Grief makes you illogical.
“You must,” he said. Even pale and bald, he was still so beautiful.
“You can’t come with me, so you might as well go to Cabo. And now you won’t have to throw all your stuff in a Target bag.”
Cabo would be better than Baltimore—no funerals, no resentful and grieving relatives, no triggers of memories of almost burning down my career before there was anything to burn.
In about an hour, I’m getting out of the Uber at LAX, and I’m immediately reminded how much I hate flying. Apparently, in some long-ago time before I was born, air travel was glamorous, everybody all dressed up like they were headed to a Rat Pack show. Now it’s hectic, rude, and even the little yappy dogs in the carriers look like they’re one canceled flight away from biting you.
But there’s something exciting about being in First Class, and not just because there are better snacks. You get to board first, so you know there’s going to be room for your carry-on. And as much as I believe in my connection with the common man, there’s a perverse pleasure in seeing people walk past you to steerage, especially the ones who look at me like my Afro and I shouldn’t be here. Enjoy bringing up the rear, Cletus! I feel like this a posthumous victory for Rosa Parks.
There’s no one sitting next to me, but across the aisle from me is a Mr. and Mrs. Howell–looking couple trying to shove an expensive leather satchel under their seat. A guy walks to the seat in front of me in a pair of aviators that cost more than his and the Howells’ plane tickets. His whole vibe is “Idris Elba IS Gordon Gekko IN Wall Street: The Musical.” He looks at me for a second, and the look on his face is a handsome sneer. Don’t sneer, handsome man! You’ll get wrinkles!
Wait . . . Is that . . . Yeah it is.
My grandmother used to warn me not to speak evil into existence, but I guess I never listen. I know that face. I’ve wanted to slap it for about thirty years.
“Well, hello, Dawn,” mouths network news god Joseph “Joe” Perkins, my former mentor and friend and current demon, also known as the man who stole my Pulitzer Prize winning story. That’s the last thing he will say to me for the next six hours, but I will spend the whole flight thinking about him, as he becomes the star of an inner drama that will not be on the in-flight entertainment menu.
