Author Description

According to police, Jarrod 'J-Rock' Mac Elroy brutally stabbed Cassandra Quinn to death in a local hotel room. There is one major flaw in that theory though-J-Rock didn't do it. Jarrod was deeply and madly in love with the Cassandra; she was his heart. He would never have killed her as the charges read against him: two counts of homicide-one for Cassandra and one for the unborn baby that she was carrying-most likely Jarrod's baby. Set in the small city of Warren, Ohio, Sweet Surrender captures the essence of a black man's despair at being trapped within the legal system, charged with a heinous crime that he did not commit. And what's worse than being wrongly incarcerated is the fact that he was actually in love with Cassandra. He wants to know the truth-he wants justice to be served up for the real culprit. He is trying to piece the puzzle together himself since no one else is. There's the witness, Bobby-in his mid-40s, one of Cassandra's customers, whose story-no matter what it is-will be more believable than Jarrod's because of the simple fact that he is a respectable, law-abiding white man while Jarrod has had many, many run-ins with the law. Diane is Jarrod's girlfriend, by definition, and she had known about Cassandra all along-she hated Cassandra. Diane had motive. Spook, Jarrod's cousin, also had motive because Spook says Cassandra stole $10,000 and used it to fund her heroin addiction. Just one night of indiscretion; one night of stepping out; creepin'-and it changed everything.