Our Take
Honorée Fanonne Jeffers has written a genuine epic, one that earns comparisons to Song of Solomon by Toni Morrison and Homegoing by Yaa Gyasi in its ambition to trace a Black American family across centuries. At the center is Ailey Pearl Garfield, growing up in the 1970s and 80s, whose coming-of-age story is interwoven with chapters tracing her ancestors back through slavery, the Reconstruction era, and beyond in rural Georgia. The structure is bold: generational interludes alternate with Ailey's own narrative, slowly revealing how the past presses on the present in ways both visible and hidden. Jeffers, a celebrated poet making her novelistic debut, brings a lyrical sensibility to even the hardest material, never flinching from the violence of American history while still finding room for humor, sensuality, and joy. The novel's title nods to W.E.B. Du Bois, whose ideas about double consciousness and the souls of Black folk echo throughout the narrative's concerns with identity, education, and belonging. This is a book for readers who love sprawling, multigenerational fiction with real intellectual heft, think fans of The Water Dancer by Ta-Nehisi Coates or Homegoing. It rewards patience; at over 800 pages, it's a commitment, but one that pays off with a fully realized world and characters who linger long after the final page.
