Faith and the Good Thing (Contemporary Fiction, Plume)

Faith Cross, a beautiful and purely innocent young black woman, is told by her dying mother to go and get herself "a good thing." Thus begins an extraordinary pilgram's progress that takes Faith from the magic and mysticism or the rural South to the promises and perils of modern-day Chicago. It is an odyssey that propels Faith from the degradation of prostitution, drugs, and drink into a faceless middle class reality and finally into a searing tragedy that ironically leads to the discovery of the real Good Thing.