by Yaa Gyasi
This book… This book. Wow! It is riveting, heart wrenching, sad, beautiful, haunting, and stunning.
It follows the story of two sisters from Ghana who are separated at birth. One winds up being taken and sold into slavery and it follows her ancestral line throughout the years in America. The other winds up staying in Africa, but eventually her ancestors wind up in America also.
Although the content and storyline are extremely sad and difficult to read given the subject matter, the writing is superb, and the character development is deep and riveting. The research that the author had to do in order to capture all of the different time periods as accurately as she did, is stunning.
This is a book that will stay with me for a long time and I feel should be read by many. It has so many layers and so much depth to it. It is the story of two sisters, of two families, but it also is the story of many slaves throughout history. And it is the story of many African-Americans today.
What a novel! What a tour de force of a book!
