Ella Pruitt

The year is 1968. Ella is a twelve year old girl who, along with her older brother and younger sister are being raised by their father after her mother ‘refuses to wake up’ one morning. The father is stern in his ways, but also misses his wife and talks to her every morning. Sometimes his voice as well as the voice of his deceased wife can be heard coming from behind the bedroom door. That summer Ella meets a young man named Damon, a handsome dark stranger who has moved to their small African American town. She falls for Damon who is five years older than her and a relationship begins that lasts until Ella turns thirteen and discovers she is pregnant by the now eighteen year old Damon. Damon welcomes the pregnancy, but Ella’s father is angry over the affair and the fact that Ella will not tell him the name of the father of her soon to be born child. This causes much tension in the household and he bars Ella from leaving the large house in which they live. Missing Damon, Ella goes out to find him and they continue their relationship. However, Damon is older and more worldly than Ella and Ella finds she must create a way to hold onto him, which she does. However her plan spirals out of control and ends up in murder. Damon flees town as a result of the murder, leaving a pregnant thirteen year old Ella to have the baby on her own. Her father despises Ella’s baby whom she named Danny, because of the shame she has brought upon the family. Stinging from her father’s hatred of her newborn son and missing Damon, Ella bundles up her baby and runs away to find Damon, but ends up in Cincinnati where she creates a new life for herself and her child. Over the years she meets the charismatic Milton Pruitt and they marry and in time he becomes a minister. Milton’s relationship with his stepson Danny never gets off the ground. He dislikes Danny and Danny dislikes him. One day Milton and Danny clash and Danny leaves home and ends up living a life of crime. In the meantime Milton struggles with the demons of his own past just as his wife, Ella is struggling with her past and what appears to be the ghost of the murdered man. The personal journeys of the characters in Ella Pruitt creates a world of complex characters and conflict that will immediately pull readers into that same world. However, at the center of the story, the unsolved murder is the force that animates these characters until the end, when the shocking and unexpected truth of the murder is revealed. Ella Pruitt, a story about memory, guilt and reckoning.

About the Author

Doug Cooper Spencer is a writer living in New York City. He is the author of four novels and a book written as an epistle.     Doug grew up in Lincoln Heights, Ohio, an all-black town north of Cincinnati. He attended Lincoln Heights Elementary and High School, before graduating from Princeton High School in 1972.     Following high school, Doug enrolled at Thomas More College,where he majored in English Literature, but he left before completing his degree because he wanted to travel and write. He joined the Navy where he traveled extensively and began to seriously pursue writing.  While in the military he began to speak openly about gay rights, and as a result, he was kicked out of the military.    He went on to eventually work at The University of Cincinnati where he worked in administration and lectured part-time.     Doug also served as in-house lecturer at the Cincinnati branch of The National Urban League's "Leadership Training Forum". He also aided in the production of, and appears in the award winning 1996documentary "All God's Children", a film that looks at the role of black gays and the black church. Along with his husband, hairstylist and photographer Greg Cooper Spencer, Doug co-produced "The Eyes Open Festival" and was president of "The Eyes Open Festival Organization", a non-profit organization that used the arts in the black LGBTQ community to educate and inspire all communities to wellness.    In 2006 Doug was named by "Clik Magazine" as one of their 'elite 25 writers', and in 2016 Doug's novel 'Ella Pruitt' was named as 'one of the best works of fiction of 2016' by The Phillis Wheatley Book Awards.    Currently Doug is at work on his sixth book (his fifth novel), a collection of short stories and memory pieces, in addition to a [email protected]/doug.cooperspencerDougcooperspencer.com(Author's photos by GregoryCooper Spencer)

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