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Overview
With empathy, grace, humor, and piercing insight, the author of gods in Alabama pens a powerful, emotionally resonant novel of the South that confronts the truth about privilege, family, and the distinctions between perception and reality--the stories we tell ourselves about our origins and who we really are.
Superheroes have always been Leia Birch Briggs' weakness. One tequila-soaked night at a comics convention, the usually level-headed graphic novelist is swept off her barstool by a handsome and anonymous Batman.
It turns out the caped crusader has left her with more than just a nice, fuzzy memory. She's having a baby boy--an unexpected but not unhappy development in the thirty-eight year-old's life. But before Leia can break the news of her impending single-motherhood (including the fact that her baby is biracial) to her conventional, Southern family, her step-sister Rachel's marriage implodes. Worse, she learns her beloved ninety-year-old grandmother, Birchie, is losing her mind, and she's been hiding her dementia with the help of Wattie, her best friend since girlhood.
Leia returns to Alabama to put her grandmother's affairs in order, clean out the big Victorian that has been in the Birch family for generations, and tell her family that she's pregnant. Yet just when Leia thinks she's got it all under control, she learns that illness is not the only thing Birchie's been hiding. Tucked in the attic is a dangerous secret with roots that reach all the way back to the Civil War. Its exposure threatens the family's freedom and future, and it will change everything about how Leia sees herself and her sister, her son and his missing father, and the world she thinks she knows.
This item is Non-Returnable
Details
- ISBN-13: 9780062105721
- ISBN-10: 0062105728
- Publisher: William Morrow & Company
- Publish Date: May 2018
- Dimensions: 8.1 x 5.3 x 0.9 inches
- Shipping Weight: 0.6 pounds
- Page Count: 384
BookPage® Reviews
Book clubs: New in paperback
The truth is stranger than fiction in American Fire: Love, Arson, and Life in a Vanishing Land, a hypnotic work of journalism by Monica Hesse that was one of the best books of 2017. In 2012, a series of arsons in downtrodden Accomack County, Virginia, put the locals on edge. Old, abandoned buildings—and there were plenty in Accomack County—were targeted, and in the end approximately 70 were destroyed. When Charlie Smith, a mechanic with a police record, was convicted of the arsons, he plead guilty, and Hesse, who reported on his hearing for the Washington Post, decided to delve more deeply into his case. Hesse learned that Smith’s girlfriend, Tonya Bundick, a mother of two fighting to make ends meet, had assisted with the fires. Set against the backdrop of a community in decline, the tale of Smith and Bundick’s relationship and the repercussions of their crimes make for a captivating page-turner. A gifted storyteller, Hesse delivers a compelling portrait of Accomack County and the lovers who tried to burn it down.
WONDROUS AND STRANGE
Set in mid-1800s Peru, Natasha Pulley’s The Bedlam Stacks is a bewitching blend of fantasy and history that readers will find hard to resist. Merrick Tremayne, a former opium smuggler for the East India Company, is homebound in Cornwall thanks to a wounded leg. When peculiar things begin to happen on his property (a statue inexplicably moves, for one thing), he decides to join an expedition to Peru to retrieve cinchona bark, which contains quinine—a necessity for treating malaria. In the mountainous regions of Peru, Merrick meets with more wonders when he and his mysterious guide Raphael arrive at the remote enclave of Bedlam, where statues move and the barrier between life and death is a simple line of salt. Pulley blends fact and fiction with ease, bringing real-life explorer Sir Clements Markham into the narrative and delivering lush descriptions of South America. Ambitious in scope with an appealing protagonist at its center, Pulley’s novel is a delightful excursion.
TOP PICK FOR BOOK CLUBS
Written with humor, compassion and a remarkable understanding of the female heart, The Almost Sisters by Joshilyn Jackson tells the story of a graphic novelist named Leia Birch Briggs. At 38, Leia is unmarried and unexpectedly pregnant after a one-night stand at a comic book conference (he was dressed as Batman—can you blame her?). Leia has yet to share the big news with her conservative family, but she soon finds her affairs overshadowed by other happenings. Leia’s stepsister, Rachel, is dealing with a marriage on the rocks, and Leia’s grandmother, Birchie, is sliding into dementia. When Leia arrives at Birchie’s Alabama home to help, she discovers that her family has a secret that could change her life forever. A rewarding work of fiction that explores race, gender, the complexities of kinship and the challenges of letting go, Jackson’s novel is sure to get book clubs talking.
This article was originally published in the June 2018 issue of BookPage. Download the entire issue for the Kindle or Nook.
