Discover the acclaimed author of Red Island House Andrea Leeās first novelāa coming-of-age classic that follows a young Black woman through her middle-class childhood in the suburbs of Philadelphia and her travels as an adult in France that captures āthe hidden world of mind and heartā (LA Times).
At once far-reaching and intimate, this novel in stories begins in Paris, where Sarah Phillips has fled after graduating from Harvard. In successive flashbacks, we learn of Sarahās proper middle-class upbringing as a ministerās daughter in a Black suburb of Philadelphia. Each layer of the past reveals the process that transformed her early sense of security into one of estrangement and escape, while her adventures slowly lead her to contemplate the eventual prospect of a return.
Like the loop of time it chronicles, Andrea Leeās brilliant and revelatory debut novel, now considered a classic of Black American literature, traces essential issues of identity and affiliation that canāt be easily settled, and its nuance and resonance remains as timely as ever.