Starred review from February 13, 2023
Lee (The Serpent’s Gift) returns after more than 20 years with the powerful story of a woman’s reentry to society after being released from prison. Ranita Atwater, 36, was convicted of a drug charge four years earlier. She grew up as the only child of middle-class Black parents in Boston, where her strict mother died when Ranita was 13. (Her beloved father died while she was in prison.) As a free woman, she longs to see her three children, who are cared for by her protective aunt Val; and to someday reunite with Maxine, the sweet and politically engaged fellow inmate she fell in love with at the prison. With the help of her aunt Jessie, Ranita makes unsteady progress toward building a new life: she gets a dishwashing job, moves into her own apartment, and is eventually allowed to visit her kids. Through therapy, she begins to come to terms with her past, including her addiction to drugs and alcohol and her relationship with the children’s father, who died six years earlier. With a light, poetic touch, Lee balances the painful details of Ranita’s reality with genuine, persistent hope for new beginnings. It’s irresistible. Agent: Jane Dystel, Dystel, Goderich & Bourret.
March 1, 2023
Lee's third novel returns to the terrain of The Serpent's Gift (1994) as it follows a Black woman working to reunite with her children in the wake of addiction and incarceration. After a four-year sentence, Ranita Atwater exits the Oak Hills correctional facility into a freedom that is shackled to her past. As Ranita seeks to shore up her sobriety and defend her parental status, she bumps up against memories from her former lives--her childhood as a girl with a loving Daddy and a Mama who found her wanting; her tumultuous relationship with Jasper, the father of her children, who introduced her to opiates; her descent into heroin addiction with David Quarles; and the blossoming joy of her love for Maxine, a fellow inmate. The novel alternates among these timelines, following the logic of Ranita's memory. Each chapter-length flashback trades the first-person narration of the present-day sections for a third-person perspective. But as she opens up to state-mandated therapist Drew Turner, Ranita reveals the traumas at the core of her struggles with addiction. Throughout, Ranita speaks of racism and systemic injustice with awesome clarity. "In prison," she tells Turner, "...you're just breathing flesh that can house contraband, and cause violence, and run." Also: "Being a commodity. Being bred....All of that's echoing, day in and day out." Diction is a central theme, as Ranita, a lover of words and facts, considers how men have used a nickname--Cherry--to define her according to their perception. The novel bristles with strong women, from aunties Jessie and Val to the inmates and sponsor who inspire Ranita to have faith in herself. Because it eschews plot twists for emotional reflection, the novel drags at times; but Lee's handling of trauma is deft, and her portrayal of the carceral system's cruelty is unflinching and empathetic. The novel's slower moments are like a pomegranate's dull skin before it breaks to reveal a cache of jewels.
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Starred review from April 1, 2023
Ranita is released after four years in the Oak Hills prison, four years of being told what to eat, when to go to bed, and how to live her life. Suddenly surrounded by all the sights and smells and noises of the outside world, she needs to make those decisions for herself. Ranita is desperate to stay sober and clean, find a place in the world, and regain her children. Every detail of prison life and the obstacles facing an emerging prisoner is deftly displayed in Lee's gritty prose. Temptations surround Ranita, and she clings to memories of friends in prison, her children, and group meetings to keep herself strong. In third-person flashbacks, readers meet Ranita's overpowering mother and her loving but helpless father as well as the men who encouraged her out-of-control behavior. Throughout the story, as she walks the streets between meetings, counseling sessions, work, and family, Ranita begins to notice the beauty in the world as she collects pieces of "city glass." With the help of her counselor, Ranita begins to see her life, like the pomegranate of the title, to be filled with unexpected treasures. Lee has created a powerful, beautifully written story of a woman who painfully confronts her past to build her future.
COPYRIGHT(2023) Booklist, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.