Bonnie J. Glover doesn't really expect to be on television Thursday, when she'll be in Los Angeles for the NAACP Image Awards ceremony, broadcast on Fox. But she's told all her friends to tune in anyway.
Glover's second novel, Going Down South, is competing with books from more famous writers — Tananarive Due, James McBride, E. Lynn Harris and Blair Underwood — in the Outstanding Literary Work, Fiction category.
"They probably won't even show the literary portion," she says. "Who wants to look at me when Beyoncé is going to be up there? But my friends have to watch, just in case they mention my name."
Don't count Glover out. Going Down South, the story of a pregnant 15-year-old sent to live with her grandmother in Alabama during the '60s, combines serious themes — female bonding in crisis — with readability.
But Glover, a novelist and lawyer who lives in Davie, is too grounded, not to mention too busy, to stay discombobulated for long. She's deep into a third novel, for one thing. Her husband is Craig Glover, a vice president at Signature Healthcare, and she has two sons who keep her busy.
On the day she learned the book was a finalist, she gave herself permission to cry. "But kids have to eat and I got to cook dinner, so I dried my tears," she says.
