Like Southgate"s first novel, The Fall of Rome, which the New York Times hailed as "a deeply felt book" that brings characters to life with its "clear, penetrating examination," Third Girl from the Left is an enormously entertaining yet serious novel about African American women struggling against all odds to express what lies deepest in their hearts.

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Latin instructor Jerome Washington is a man out of place. The lone African-American teacher at the Chelsea School, an elite all-boys boarding school in Connecticut, he has spent nearly two decades trying not to appear too "racial." So he is unnerved when Rashid Bryson, a promising black inner-city student who is new to the school, seeks Washington as a potential ally against Chelsea's citadel of white privilege. Preferring not to align himself with Bryson, Washington rejects the boy's friendship. Surprised and dismayed by Washington's response, Bryson turns instead to Jana Hansen, a middle-aged white divorcée who is also new to the school -- and who has her own reasons for becoming involved in the lives of both Bryson and Washington.

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Fourteen-year-old Vicki Harris's dream has come true. She has been accepted into the summer program at New York City's prestigious School of American Ballet. It will be hard work and highly competitive, but Vicki feels ready. She is totally committed to dancing.

Vicki isn't prepared to be one of only two African-American students in the program. Nor is she expecting the racism she finds within the school. And Michael, from Harlem, takes Vicki completely by surprise. He shakes up her dream world--where Baryshnikov is her idol, her parents never really got divorced, and every pirouette is perfect--and shows her that the real world is bigger than a stage.

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