SHORTLISTED FOR THE WATERSTONES DEBUT FICTION PRIZE‘I LOVED THIS BOOK’ ROXANE GAY‘AN AMERICAN EPIC’ CHLOE BENJAMIN‘BEAUTIFULLY WRITTEN, INSPIRING’ WOMAN AND HOME, BOOKS OF THE YEARFleeing her husband’s explosive temper, Miriam has brought her two daughters, Joan and Mya, back to Memphis, to the home her father built in the 40s.Joan was only a child the last time she visited Memphis. She doesn’t remember the bustle of Beale Street on a summer’s night or the smell of honeysuckle as she climbs the porch steps to her aunt’s house. But when the front door opens, she does remember her cousin Derek.As Joan learns more about her family’s past she discovers she’s not the only North woman to have experienced great hurt. But she also sees their resilience and courage, how these extraordinary women fry green tomatoes and braid hair and sing all the while.Memphis has changed since Joan’s grandparents lived there. Streets once filled with the beat of protest and blues, now echo with gunfire. But Joa
A spellbinding debut novel tracing three generations of a Southern Black family and one daughter’s discovery that she has the power to change her family’s legacy.In the summer of 1995, ten-year-old Joan, her mother, and her younger sister flee her father’s violence, seeking refuge at her mother’s ancestral home in Memphis. Half a century ago, Joan’s grandfather built this majestic house in the historic Black neighborhood of Douglass--only to be lynched days after becoming the first Black detective in Memphis. This wasn’t the first time violence altered the course of Joan’s family’s trajectory, and she knows it won’t be the last. Longing to become an artist, Joan pours her rage and grief into sketching portraits of the women of North Memphis--including their enigmatic neighbor Miss Dawn, who seems to know something about curses.Unfolding over seventy years through a chorus of voices, Memphis weaves back and forth in time to show how the past and future are forever intertwined. It is onl
