1994

I usually set my clock radio to 6 a.m., so I make sure to get 15 minutes to hit “snooze” so the alarm doesn’t think he won. But this morning, just as I open my eye ready to smack that button, my phone rings.

“Tonya get the paper!” my mother is saying. “Girl, you’re IN the paper!”

Now I wake up.

“Dawn would have told me if her story came out.” My mother is one of the only people who know that my sister Dawn, a reporter up in York, Pa., is working on a story about something shady that my boyfriend Percy is doing. Should I dump him? Probably.

Dawn has talked to a lot of people at the Mayor’s office in Baltimore about how the Mayor’s brother is conspiring to knock down public schools to build a waterpark. I went to public schools here and I take this personally. I didn’t want to believe it was true and that Percy, who works for the Mayor’s weasel brother, could be involved.

But he is. And Dawn was getting somewhere. I think she would have prepared me if the story was coming out so I could get a lawyer, or tell my boss at the City office where I work I was the whistleblower, or start applying at Popeye’s.

“How do you have the paper from York?” I ask.

“It’s not in the York paper. That’s what I’m trying to tell you! It’s in the Baltimore paper! And Joe wrote it!”

Joe? Joe Perkins? Dawn’s friend? I think he was helping her, which I I thought was weird, but she said she could trust him. Did he steal her story? Did she give it to him and I didn’t know about it? What is going on?

As I try to sort this in my head, my mother is reading the story to me and I have to say it’s well-written. But I know in my gut, as she lays out there my involvement and everybody’s guilt, that I am in trouble. I didn’t do anything, but I am.

“I gotta go, Ma,” I say, and desperately dial Dawn. I need some answers. It just rings. And rings.

“Where are you?” I scream into her answering machine. Silence. I hang up, panicked.

What’s not silent? My phone. Because my boss is calling.

And so it begins.

Family & Other Calamities
Genre: Women’s Fiction
Release: June 2025
Format: Print, Digital, Audio
Amazon | Barnes and Noble

A successful journalist returns to her hometown just as her biggest mistake becomes headline news in this vibrant, funny, and heartfelt novel about facing the past, and its secrets, head-on.

Entertainment journalist Dawn Roberts has a lot to work through: a widow’s grief, betrayals of family and friends, and scandals that almost tanked her reputation. Not that Dawn dwells on the past. Well, hardly. When she returns to Baltimore with her husband’s ashes, she can’t avoid it. In fact, she’s diving into decades of backstabbing and treachery for her first trip home in years.

She’s looking at you, Joe Perkins. Her former mentor, whose explosive exposé about big-city corruption is being turned into a slanderous movie, is also back in town. The villain of the piece? Dawn. The good news is that this could all be a chance to reset—heal family wounds, admit to her own mistakes, and maybe even reconnect with the one who got away. Oh, and get even with Joe any way she can.

With the surprising help of an up-and-coming journalist and a legendary R & B diva, Dawn will finally set the record straight. Returning home might just be the biggest story in Dawn’s life, a fresh start—and happy ending—she never expected.

Meet the author
Leslie Gray Streeter is an award-winning journalist and columnist for the Baltimore Banner. She is the author of the memoir Black Widow: A Sad-Funny Journey Through Grief for People Who Normally Avoid Books with Words Like “Journey” in the Title, the cohost of the podcast Fine Beats and Cheeses, and a frequent speaker on grief. She is also a slow runner, an amateur vegan cook, and a fan of Law & Order. Leslie lives in Baltimore, Maryland, with her son, Brooks.