Review by Booklist Review
In her expansive debut collection, Moore draws upon ancestral traditions to illuminate how the past continually shapes the present. These 11 short stories traverse the Southern landscape, from Florida's marshes to the Carolina mountains, exploring the deep-rooted ties their characters feel to home, even as many of them yearn to leave. As they search for love, characters uncover unexpected truths about identity, belonging, and choice. In one story, a young man discovers a hidden side of a family curse, one silenced during a time when choosing who to love was an act of rebellion. In another, a boy learns the quiet strength of community and its ability to uplift. And in another, a young woman boldly redefines family on her own terms. Moore masterfully captures the intergenerational experiences of Black men, women, and families, weaving tales of resistance, connection, and self-discovery. With compassion and depth, she explores the tension between longing for home and finding freedom elsewhere. A stunning debut by a writer whose voice is both vital and unforgettable.
From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.
Review by Publisher's Weekly Review
In Moore's transportive debut collection, Southern Black men and women contend with ambivalent feelings toward home. Ever Roberts, the protagonist of "When We Go, We Go Downstream," struggles to carry on a long-distance relationship with a woman named Amari and reflects on his family's supposed curse, which originated with an ancestor who left a lover to escape from slavery. After an awkward visit with Amari in his hometown of Austin, Ever comforts himself with the thought that their fate is out of his hands ("If there is a curse on his family, even on the dust mote of his particular life, then he cannot be blamed, nobody's leaving can be his fault"). "All Skin Is Clothing," a standout, tells the story of a young Kentucky boy who narrowly avoids being struck by a stray bullet. Afterward, his family moves to a nearby suburb where he and his sister struggle to fit in. "Gather Here Again" follows a Charlottesville, Va., woman doing her best to hide the ugly truth of her city's history of Ku Klux Klan violence from her grandchildren by veiling it as a ghost story. Some of the stories' resolutions are telegraphed, but the author impresses with her meticulous research (endnotes point to further reading), and the entries strongly evoke the region's many flavors. This solid collection has much to admire. Agent: Valerie Borchardt, Georges Borchardt, Inc. (July)
(c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Review by Kirkus Book Review
An intimate, meticulously crafted, and tenderly rendered tour through the lives of Black women, men, and children seeking solid ground in a mercurial American southland. This stirring collection of 11 short stories is a prism of contemporary African American life stalked by history, public and private. For example: In the opening story, "When We Go, We Go Downstream," Ever, a native son of Texas, is determined to overcome a multigenerational curse to marry the woman he loves, despite long--and exasperating--odds. In "All Skin Is Clothing," Brayden, a young Kentucky boy, struggles to recover from the trauma of gunfire bursting into his home. "Naturale" is emblematic of Moore's command of intricate detail, emotional nuance, and tension as she inhabits the voice of Cherie, a Charleston-based hairstylist reassembling her marriage shattered by her husband's affair with a woman whose hair she is now determined to treat as well as any other customer's. "The Happy Land" is set in the mountains of western North Carolina where Gideon, a carpenter like his deeply religious father, anxiously risks driving through a heavy snowstorm to look in on his Pa, from whom he has been estranged since his marriage to another man. The southern locales of these stories are diverse. But what links them all is their main characters' pursuit--sometimes hesitant, often dogged--of peace, or at least grace after personal upheaval. It's likely you'd have to go all the way back toHue and Cry by James Alan McPherson (1968) to find a debut collection of short stories by a young Black writer as prodigiously humane and finely wrought as this. A regional relief map of the human heart. Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
