Sexton's debut follows three generations of one Black New Orleans family as the terms of unfreedom change around them. Evelyn, a Creole daughter of the Black upper class, comes of age during the Second World War and chooses Renard — a janitor's son with medical-school ambitions — over her family's standing. Her daughter Jackie, in 1982, is holding a baby and a fragile household together while her husband Terry, his promising career already derailed, slides into addiction and returns with promises. Jackie's son T.C., fresh out of a four-month sentence in the New Orleans Katrina remade, grows marijuana for the love of the craft and tries to start over — for his own newborn son — until one last deal presents itself. The novel was longlisted for the 2017 National Book Award and won the Crook's Corner Prize and the Black Caucus of the American Library Association's First Novelist Award.
Author: Margaret Wilkerson Sexton · Original publisher: Counterpoint (Berkeley, California), 2017
