This book has been on my TBR list since it was released, but it took my book club choosing it for our June book to move it up on my list, and I’m so glad I did. This was an understated and haunting novel about a family split apart when their teenage twins disappear and only one of them returns. It tells the story of three generations of the women in this family.
Desiree and Stella and born into the town of Mallard, a Southern town made up of white-appearing Black people who have formed their own town, where they still aren’t safe and constantly live in fear of being killed for being Black. When Desiree and Stella are sixteen, they leave for New Orleans. Several years later, Desiree returns with the “blackest child” the town of Mallard has ever seen, while Stella disappears, pretending to be white to build a new life.
While this book was advertised as a family saga, it was so much more than that. It starts off with a layered examination of race and color and racism, and then branches out to identity, in terms of not only race, but class and sexuality, as well. And the characters themselves, especially Desiree’s daughter Jude, are so interesting, and I think the author did an incredible job of capturing so much raw emotion in her writing.
The ending was not necessarily what I wanted for most of these characters, but I don’t think this was an everyone lives happy ever after kind of book. And it’s a book that I highly recommend.