As Time Flies is an intersection between Waiting to Exhale and The Rainmaker. It is a romantic legal thriller set in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.
The novel opens with a flashback to the 1977 murder of one of the Academy Girls. (C. Rennette Lee has been a corporate attorney and a law professor at several ABA accredited law schools. She was born and raised in Pittsburgh during the same time as the As Time Flies characters. Her work has been previously published in various legal journals and cited by Harvard).
Carmen Browning and the Academy girls will live again in the sequels to As the Time Flies.
In the years after Dina’s murder the struggle to hold it together tore her classmates apart. The Academy girls, Carmen, Ana, Tasha, Nikki and Susan buried Dina knowing their lives will never be the same.
The homicidal monster followed Dina for years. He strangled her with the belt from her own coat like an animal, as if he never laid eyes on her before. Dragged her off into the woods, violated her body, with his hands and sticks. Ana wants to squeeze the life out of him the same way he clamped his huge grotesque dark hands around Dina’s throat. He is hideous and creepy. Even now years later, when Ana closes her eyes, she can see Dina’s body. Dina’s hands bruised and torn from fighting him. That horrible, big, purple, blue-green and yellow knot to the left of her forehead where he hit her with the log. Every sign of how violent her death had been was evident. Ana could never forget it. Neither will any of the Academy girls. Their memories permeate every lunch together, every phone call, every greeting and goodbye.
All these years have made them powerful women. Career women. Competent, accomplished, secure. Whole, well-adjusted, loving each other. Or so they believe. They rarely acknowledge the riptide beneath their friendship. Can they continue loving their men, their children, themselves without dealing with this? Who will make them face their issues if not each other? Nikki, the Baptist saint hides her distaste for Susan the conscious-less Ho, but finds compassion for Tasha, the princess in constant pursuit of low life hustlers. Ana wouldn’t know a barbecued pig foot now if it fell outta’ her momma’s purse. Carmen trapped in a world of Ralph Lauren and Robb Report allure can’t remember what the love of a man is like. Love lives for her only in the eyes of a three-year-old.
Crisis has brought the chickens home to roost. The Academy girls need each other like a cast away in the Pacific ocean needs a drink of pure water. They will repair their friendship. If only to solve all their legal and moral quagmires. They must confront this killer turned stalker. Can they find any peace left in their souls? Can they love their children as they should, and Raymond and Samuel and Todd like these men deserve to be loved.
