I was able to snag this gem when it was a reader's first book and I am looking forward to reading it. The story sounds interesting and the cover is gorgeous. I just may have to buy a physical copy of this one. If you are looking for a book to start off 2018 with, check this one out. Naima Coster is a young African American writer and this would fit in nicely with the reading blackout challenge!
About the book:
A modern-day story of family, loss, and renewal, Halsey Street captures the deeply human need to belong—not only to a place but to one another.
Penelope Grand has scrapped her failed career as an artist in Pittsburgh and moved back to Brooklyn to keep an eye on her ailing father. She’s accepted that her future won’t be what she’d dreamed, but now, as gentrification has completely reshaped her old neighborhood, even her past is unrecognizable. Old haunts have been razed, and wealthy white strangers have replaced every familiar face in Bed-Stuy. Even her mother, Mirella, has abandoned the family to reclaim her roots in the Dominican Republic. That took courage. It’s also unforgivable.
When Penelope moves into the attic apartment of the affluent Harpers, she thinks she’s found a semblance of family—and maybe even love. But her world is upended again when she receives a postcard from Mirella asking for reconciliation. As old wounds are reopened, and secrets revealed, a journey across an ocean of sacrifice and self-discovery begins.
An engrossing debut, Halsey Street shifts between the perspectives of these two captivating, troubled women. Mirella has one last chance to win back the heart of the daughter she’d lost long before leaving New York, and for Penelope, it’s time to break free of the hold of the past and start navigating her own life.
About the Author
I grew up in Fort Greene, Brooklyn. At twelve, I matriculated at an all-girls school on the Upper East Side, where I met other New Yorkers whose families and stories differed greatly from my own. I adjusted to a new school and culture by writing fiction, inadvertently chronicling the reorientations occurring within me--new speech patterns, tastes, and an emerging view of myself as a young adult. I spent summers in the Dominican Republic, where I was especially aware of myself as a person born out of a momentous transition: my family’s emigration from that island (and two others: Cuba and Curaçao) to New York City. As an author, I am interested in race, migration, family dynamics and history, intergenerational trauma, subjectivity and interior life. I tend to write about home, belonging, and trying to find one's way.
that is a gorgeous cover! hmmm, I may have to add this to my buy list. Thanks for spotlighting :)
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