by Honorée Fanonne Jeffers
Reviewed by Linda:
This novel by a distinguished poet is receiving well-deserved attention for its historic sweep through American slavery and the difficult decades since, giving voice to many who have been forgotten. Young Ailey spends summers in a small Georgia town where her mother’s family has lived since their ancestors arrived there from Africa. She struggles to find her way in life, weighed down by a childhood trauma and by the whispers of her maternal forbears, among them Indigenous, Black, and white. Only by researching the unspoken secrets in her family’s past can she come into her own and move forward.