Priscilla by M.J. SIMMS-MADDOX

Set in the early 1980s, book #1 of The Priscilla Trilogy portrays a bright, carefree, enterprising young woman strongly bound to her father--a Methodist minister and consummate politician about whom she has conflicted feelings. Shortly after she begins her career as an assistant professor of political science at Florida A&M University in Tallahassee, her father asks her to relocate closer to home (Prendergast, New York). She contacts an Ohio state senator for whom she performed an internship during her graduate studies at The Ohio State University and with whom she had an affair. The senator offers her a job as his legislative aide. She accepts. The story is off and running.

Throughout, Priscilla takes a deep look at the forces which made her what she is: her family roots in highly-segregated Mississippi, her upbringing in upstate New York where subtle racism leaves its scars despite her loving father's protection, a campus date rape that leaves her with unhealed wounds and, a scintillating season as a high-powered legislative aide in a life-altering political scandal.