Cheryl's Song: Until the Sun Comes Up book cover

An adult inspirational romance • Washington, D.C. area • 1978–79

She knows how to love.

Now she has to learn who comes first.

Love. Brotherhood. Faith. Consequences.

Cheryl Fields has ambition, beauty, a fierce love for Mike Elliott, and a place in the Black Greek world at Maryland State University. Then Perry—a younger student, Bible-study leader and would-be fraternity pledge—steps onto Mike's basketball court and into Cheryl's life. Romance, brotherhood, faith and responsibility begin to collide.

Buy the Revised Edition Discover the Story

The Story

Beauty gets Cheryl noticed. Love gives her somewhere to belong. Faith asks who she really is.

Fall 1978. Mike Elliott—Frosty to almost everybody on campus—is charismatic, athletic, musical, fiercely loyal and dangerous when pride takes over. Cheryl sees the tenderness beneath the legend. Then Perry arrives with an unsettling calm, an uncompromising faith and a desire to enter Mike's fraternity. Cheryl becomes the point where their very different ideas of strength, loyalty and manhood meet.

The revised edition opens on the basketball court rather than with backstory, bringing the central relationships and conflicts into motion immediately.

Love. Brotherhood. Faith. Consequences.

Love

Devotion, tenderness, sex, jealousy and the question of whether love can survive accountability.

Brotherhood

Black Greek tradition offers family and identity while pledge culture tests the limits of loyalty.

Faith

Perry introduces Cheryl to a faith that does more than comfort her—it challenges the order of her loves.

Consequences

Family wounds, secrecy, violence and pride push private choices into public consequences.

Black college life • 1979

A campus alive with basketball, bands, dorm rooms, step shows, Bible study and Greek tradition.

The revised novel enters that world through action: Mike holding court, Perry refusing to be intimidated, and Cheryl watching two very different kinds of strength collide.

“God help me, I did love to watch that man move.”
— Cheryl Fields

About the Author

Kenneth Bossard

Kenneth Bossard wrote Cheryl's Song in 2005. The revised edition is his final look at the story after writing the accompanying screenplay and television material based on these characters. Bossard pledged Kappa Alpha Psi Fraternity, Incorporated at the University of Maryland at College Park.

KennethBossard.com