The journey began in If I Should Speak with Tamika
Douglass's path of spiritual growth and direction,
treaded at the hands of her college roommates, Aminah
and Dee, two Muslims on opposite ends of their strength
in Islam. Footsteps, the third in a trilogy to follow
Umm Zakiyyah's A Voice, is a story that stands on its
own in both impact and inspiration. At the heart of the
novel is the story of Ismael, a forty-seven-year-old
biracial son of a White mother and Black father, and
Sarah, a forty-nine-year-old White daughter of the
racist South. Married for twenty-six years and having
accepted Islam on a journey they took together, the Ali
pair has what every partnership hopes to achieve.
Stability, dedication, and a comfortable life. As the
story unfolds, the hairline fractures in their marriage
become visible, and the fractures become splintering
cracks as Sarah discovers a detrimental secret her
husband has kept from her for four months. In the face
of his wife's discovery, Ismael is torn between the love
and security of his marriage, and the natural
inclinations any man must temper in a world full of
choices, and devastating consequences. Forming the
thread that weaves the characters' lives together is
Alika Mitchell, a strikingly beautiful daughter of a
mulatto mother and half-Nigerian father, who is
conducting a multicultural research for her master's,
and who inspires in the reader questions that one is
left to ponder long after the book is closed.
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