Starred review from December 4, 2023
In Cheeks’s engrossing debut, a Black family faces financial hardships and debates the merits of a new reparations program. After a promising start as a reporter in New York City, Willie Revel reluctantly returns to Philadelphia to help her father, Max, with the family’s construction business and moves into the house hers parents proudly bought many years ago as the first Black family in their neighborhood. As the years pass, she gets pregnant from a one-night stand, raises her daughter, Paloma, and tries to help fix the company’s various financial setbacks. Meanwhile, her former mentor Elizabeth Johnson, a descendant of President Andrew Johnson, becomes a U.S. senator and then president. Hoping to reverse the damage done by her ancestor, who throttled Reconstruction, Johnson signs into law the controversial Forgiveness Act, which calls for the U.S. government to pay reparations to those who can prove their ancestors were enslaved. Max, desperate to save his business and long distrustful of the government, enters into a construction project with a vocal opponent of the act and considers selling the family home, prompting Willie to unearth their family history in hopes of securing reparation payments, even as a research trip leaves Paloma feeling abandoned. Cheeks seamlessly threads the themes of resentment, forgiveness, and legacy through the multilayered narrative. Readers will be moved. Agent: Stephanie Delman, Trellis Literary.
December 15, 2023
In a U.S. that's just elected its first female president, the members of a Black family find themselves divided when a federal reparations act is proposed. Wilhelmina "Willie" Revel grew up watching her father, Max, who owned a construction company, work tirelessly to provide financial security and upward mobility for his family, having been haunted by his own father's inability to secure a mortgage because of his race. Willie goes to college to become a journalist, and just as she's starting to make a name for herself as a reporter for the Village Voice, she's offered a job with the U.S. Senate campaign of Elizabeth Johnson, one of her former professors. Unfortunately, though, her father gets sick, and Willie needs to go home to take over the business. Eleven years later, now-President Johnson puts forward the Forgiveness Act, which would formally apologize for slavery in part by providing reparations of $175,000 to each descendant of slaves. Willie is now a single mother to a young daughter and is attempting to keep her father's business afloat. When she decides to undertake the genealogical work required to file for the money, she unintentionally provokes her brother, parents, and grandfather, all of whom have different perspectives on why it's a bad idea to go poking into the family history, even as the U.S. deals with a violent backlash. Cheeks' debut novel seeks to explore the question of "whether forgiveness could be political, and, if so, could it last." The story doesn't quite address this ambitious question for the nation at large, instead focusing on the many costs that not knowing where one comes from can take on a person, as well as the social and interpersonal effects of racism. Willie is depicted with tremendous care, but there is at times too much narrative distance from the large cast of supporting characters. A freshly told, complex family drama with an intriguing premise.
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January 1, 2024
Complex family relationship dynamics and hidden histories are elegantly examined in Cheeks' debut family saga. Willie is working as a journalist in New York City and had just been offered a promising job with her mentor, a U.S. senator, when her father is seriously injured while working for his construction company. After pressure from her parents to take over the family business, she abandons her burgeoning career and returns to her Philadelphia childhood home, where theirs was the first Black family on the block. Eleven years later, she is still there, raising a daughter and wondering what might have been. Her mentor is now the president and has introduced a reparations act that would provide financial compensation to families who can prove they are descendants of slaves. Hoping to save their floundering business, Willie delves into her ancestry, meeting with much resistance from her family. Cheeks imbues her characters with depth and emotion and tackles the personal and the political with skillful, expressive writing, and the Revel family story is engrossing. Perfect for readers who enjoyed In West Mills (2019) and Red at the Bone (2019).
COPYRIGHT(2024) Booklist, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.