Carol Denise Mitchell Presents Noah: True Love Never Dies

In fact, I was a competitive girl, a tom boy, who prided myself on beating up boys. This included crying over hearing the incredible voice of Tina Turner, thinking she was hurt, until my grandmother explained to me, she was singing...
~~~


 I learned early on in my young love life I was like a man when it came to love. 

I had to be the pursuer or, it was hard for me to like a boy.
~~~

Based on True Story

I remember when I first began writing this novel and not knowing where to begin about my one and only love. Suddenly, my heart began to lead the way. Forgive me for being so candidly truthful about Noah. Baby, I love you so much the only way I could connect to those rare feelings was to draw up our love in vivid memories. Where are you, my love? I miss you so! If love truly is a hurting thing I am in critical condition for your love. While my heart aches all over the place, even after all of those years, love is the same. Your love was so amazing I can't even wait to share how it came about with the world. When lovers across the world hear about us, I am sure they will agree that no love in the world has ever matched the way I love you, honey. In fact, long after we first met, I still love you! Decades after it first happened, I still yearn for your tender touch. I need you so badly, I had to do something! So, I wrote a book that is propelled by my love for you. After considering numerous titles for the book, the only one that fit this saga was you! I need only to say your name darling for it all to come roaring back. Thank you my love for rising above all others I’ve ever met to maintain your role as my one and only love. Thank you, NOAH.

~~~

Noah

True Love Never Dies

By Carol D. Mitchell

Carol Mitchell is singing in Background... Cool, right?!

Noah is about a child, a woman, looking for love. What love was, it was quite obvious she didn't know, any more than the rest of us. Tiffany was from a large family with a single parent. Her mother worked continuously to provide for her family, which meant that she had little time for individual attention for simply being a mother and teaching them about things they needed to know as they grew. Luckily, until she died, Tiffany had her grandmother with whom she felt she could share anything... That helped her through her early years of school...
And, fortunately, Tiffany always met at least one girlfriend with whom she was able to share her secret thoughts...

The story is written in first-person and reads like the main character is sharing her life story with us. Like any woman who meets with her girlfriends, and they spend hours talking and often repeating what it is that has inspired their latest emotions... Do you remember the first little boys who you had a crush on? Mine were named Jimmy and Dale and we were in grade school. So, yes, I could empathize quite easily as Tiffany talked about a little boy, Kenneth, who wore a bow-tie, and was dropped off to school in a large black car. (Would you believe that my "first true love" was also named Kenneth!) 

Tiffany was devastated when she learned that her friend's family had moved... He had never gotten to see the new dress her grandmother had bought for her, which also had a little bow-tie at the top. She had worn the dress four days straight so he would see it and nobody knew why...

I liked it; in fact, it would take a few years 
for me to learn

 it was a French kiss. It was my first kiss, 

it was sweet and wet.

~~~

Tiffany was a competitive girl, and decided aggressively that when she was attracted to a boy, she was going after him. In many ways, she had developed a confidence that was perhaps beyond her years, maybe because of being in a large family with older children...

Her first puppy love, which she later learned how to differentiate, was sweet. But when she got to be older, she discovered things changing in her body, and she became what you might call obsessed with a fine young boy in her class... Her pursuit included paying a bribe to another girl so Tiffany could sit right behind him... Soon he was hooked up with a cheerleader...and she was still paying the little girl for the rest of the year... Bummer! This love thing was not going as well as she thought it would...

And then her first kiss... which was just that, with no ties to it whatsoever... Funny how our memories remember "the act" as opposed to the one who gave it...after all it was our first kiss... 

But nobody told her that she would be in the minority, and ridiculed, for still being a virgin in her school... She accidentally responded at a assembly one day and she and three other girls just automatically raised their hands. All the other girls were white; Tiffany the only black...After the ridicule that came and the losing of friends, she was out to "save her reputation" in the hood. Sad to say...

A pretty girl is often bombarded with offers of "love" relationships, but when Dean asked, she accepted immediately, to rid herself of the shamed virgin title, until she learned he was married... This story ends in a tragedy...sadly...

Before long, she had graduated and her mother told her she would have to leave home and make a living for herself... Although she was an intelligent girl and her goal was to go into real estate, she was not immediately prepared... She started dancing in bars...And seeing this fine sister, naturally, King Walker, the local Pimp, came around... Their relationship was quite unique... and I understood why Tiffany got involved...until he was murdered in front of her...

Tiffany went from one guy to another, most of them chasing her. And she was a special woman because they all fell in love with her... But the last one, he had wanted marriage almost immediately. But she kept him hanging...until he took her to meet his family... There it was made clear what would happened if Tiffany ever hurt their kin...  Tiffany was facing issues that were too tough to handle on her own...

But on the night before the wedding, while her dancing fool stayed on the floor, Tiffany went to the bar for her favorite drink... a coke with a cherry. Noah served her that night...

The black bow tie in front of the white background of a pleated cotton shirt was back. I was not in the first grade anymore. This time a little boy was not wearing that cute bow-tie. This was a real man. In fact, this man was a grown man presented to me in a form that only appeared to be a dream. 
He was perfect as his lean body bent down to make the perfect drink for a customer. To me, his skin was rich like chocolate fudge, while his perfect nose was sexy, long and pointed in an aristocratic manner, like a white boy. I had never seen a nose on a black man positioned so exact, so high below a perfectly round shaped black afro that was precision around a tall frame. His hair was filled with luxurious, shiny curls that cascaded around the world. They sparkled beneath the night light that lined the bar as he poured each drink with enough purpose as to not leave one spill behind. 
He walked gracefully, back and forth up then down the aisle behind a 4-foot glistening bar, meticulously serving drinks to patrons without blinking a beautiful long lash. At last, after all, I had gone through I was in love with Noah. 
Suffice it to say that, once I saw "him" for the first time, I knew instantly what the hoopla over my past loves was. So, from Kenneth to Ronnie, then onward to King plus beyond, they were all place settings on my way to finding my true "Prince Charming." In fact, from then, on I didn't care that the most significant love match I had ever experienced happened one night before I was set to marry another man...

!!!

No matter who you are, you will be pulled in by Carol Mitchell's story of Noah. But does True Love Never Die? Perhaps many of us can never answer the question. But, also, many of us will know, as readers, that the search for True Love may never happen. What was Tiffany to do when she felt she had truly fallen in love on the night before her "shot-gun" wedding? About that time, I was looking at the picture of Noah and thinking he was mighty fine... Could I deal with the potential danger of backing out of a wedding?

Mitchell includes some important issues in her book--not as a counselor, but as to how she saw each of the issues: education, prostitution, drugs, and parenting. While having to deal with some bad choices, she never once lost sight of the importance of these goals she had set for herself...and learned from them...

Mitchell is a storyteller that uses her personal experience upon which to build her novels. I suppose the story would fit into Urban Fiction...but it is more a biography of a woman searching for love, including in the wrong places. It reads very much like a diary that she has kept since grade school and the content matures along with her as she becomes older. It is intimate, revealing and yet a story that fills you with the possibilities... With a totally satisfactory ending! Teens through adults will enjoy Tiffany and Noah's story... Check it out!

GABixlerReviews

Carol Denise Mitchell is journalist and author.

Mitchell has a thirty-year writing career. She wrote What Happened to Suzy winning praise; and, a coveted (2011) book award, for its message of healing and hope.

Mitchell worked alongside slain newspaper Editor, Chauncey Bailey, as a news reporter.

Carol Denise Mitchell, was born sixth of sixteen children, is the daughter of Zebbie Thomas Charles, Sr., and Tasceaie Carise Charles. Mitchell was reared in Los Angeles, California, during the Civil Rights Movement, and she recalls how living in Watts, California, during this era in American history, was a motivating influence behind her writing career.

"I remember the Watts Riot, when the city imploded for three long, life-changing days. Encouraged by my mother; I knew this kind of degradation and Urban ruin, was not going to be remedied fast enough for the kind of changes the community deserved. One year after the riots, we moved thirty-five miles east to Pomona, California," says Mitchell. She concludes that being a living witness to an infamous part of Watts history left an indelible imprint on her wanting to be a part of change that helped her old community via writing and memorializing such events first-hand.

In 1977, Mitchell moved to the Northern, California, Bay Area, to launch her writing career.