Terry McMillan, a prominent voice of contemporary African-American women's fiction, was recently featured on The Oprah Winfrey Show. The author of such blockbuster bestsellers as Waiting to Exhale and How Stella Got Her Groove Back wasn't chatting with the "Queen of Daytime Television" to promote a new book or movie adaptation.

No, McMillan was on the show to confront her openly gay ex-husband, the decades-younger man who had inspired Stella. The show turned into a three-ring circus, and though it was hilariously entertaining, even Oprah looked a little uncomfortable.

Suddenly, the expert storyteller didn't have the perfect life anymore -- now she had a whole lot more in common with her characters, strong women who just can't shake the wrong men.

All these characters are present in one of McMillan's best books, 2001's ambitious A Day Late and a Dollar Short, a novel capturing the troubled lives of the Price family.

Day Late begins with Viola Price, the caustic matriarch who loves her four children dearly, but is the first to air their dirty laundry and moan about their shortcomings.

Each adult child has gone out into the world and achieved different levels of success. All four deal with some life struggle, such as infidelity, alcoholism, or parenting issues.

The beauty of this book is that it switches perspectives. Each chapter is told from a different point of view and capitalizes on McMillan's knack for changing voices.

Paris, the oldest sister, has gone out into corporate America and built a thriving catering business. Her proper, business-like tone is completely the opposite of her mother's down-home slang.

The most frustrating chapters are from Lewis, the troubled only son. He's constantly in and out of jail and the hospital, living day to day on the few bucks he can scrape together when not giving in to his addictions.

Though each of the characters has its own problems, they're developed to the point where they still have sympathetic traits that draw in the reader. Every character's story also has one surprising twist. Paris has just about everything she could want, but pops prescription painkillers.

Lewis has a genius IQ, but can't get past a disturbing childhood trauma.

McMillan's greatest strength is capturing the details of everyday life and relationships. Anyone who comes from a big family knows the ever-changing dynamics.

One day you love your sister, the next you could kill her, and the other way around.

Even at when they are at their lowest points -- and every character has one or two -- there's nothing they wouldn't do for each other.

Clocking in at 450 pages, it takes a while to get through this book. But the storytelling is fast-paced, and filled with colorful phrases that make for great away messages. Most are filled with expletives, so they unfortunately can't be printed here.

The only problem comes from the predictability of some of the plot points. Some of the issues are a little movie-of-the-week, and some characters are a little slow to catch on to some developments that the reader will see coming a mile away.

But in McMillan's defense, the stories unfold with so much laughter and so many tears, that this can be forgiven, and she makes us feel lucky to witness it all.