WHAT YOU OWE ME by BeBe Moore Campbell cuts across the boundaries of race and class and takes a closer look at friendship among two women from very different backgrounds.

In this startling tale of betrayal and unforgiveness, Hosanna Clark meets Gilda Rosenstein while they're working as maids in a Los Angeles hotel. The two begin a friendship that will prompt 50 years of bitterness and betrayal. Hosanna is a black woman who has fled Texas with her brother after their family was cheated out of their land. Gilda, a Jewish woman newly arrived from Poland, is a recent survivor of the German concentration camps, still wearing the internal and external scars. The only thing of value that Gilda has brought with her is her family's formula for moisture lotion. As their friendship grows, each discovers the other's gifts. Hosanna gets the idea of selling the lotion to black women longing for a little beauty and luxury in their harsh lives, and they decide to partner together to create a line of cosmetics and lotions for black women. But Gilda and Hosanna's friendship--and partnership--can't withstand racism and the meddling of Gilda's family. Gilda suddenly disappears with all of the company's assets, and Hosanna is left holding the bag. Abandoned and nearly penniless, Hosanna tries to continue her enterprise alone. She forsakes a true love and neglects her husband and daughters for the sake of her business. Over the years, Gilda becomes the successful head of a cosmetics giant, while Hosanna sees her dream dry up and wither away. Full of bitterness and resentment, Hosanna raises her daughter, Matriece, to carry that same hatred. Long after Hosanna's death, Matriece, literally haunted by her mother, carries on Hosanna's drive and sense of betrayal. When she goes to work for Gilda Cosmetics, the wheels of revenge are set in motion. Will Matriece learn what Hosanna never did: how to balance love and ambition, friendship and enterprise?

Bebe Moore Campbell is the author of Your Blues Ain't Like Mine, for which she won an NAACP Image Award for literature, and the New York Times best-seller Brothers and Sisters and Singing in the Comeback Choir. She is a commentator for National Public Radio and a contributing editor for Essence magazine. Her articles have appeared in The New York Times Magazine, The Washington Post, USA Today Weekend, Black Enterprises, Ebony, and numerous other publications.
*Bebe Moore Campbell passed away November 27, 2006. She leaves behind her husband, Ellis Gordon, Jr., a daughter, the actress Maia Campbell, and a son Ellis Gordon, III.

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