Tati wants to know the identity of her absent father but everyone around her, most of all her mother, Nadia, is tight-lipped. What Tati doesn’t know is that the story of her birth is tethered to the fraught history of the Dupree women, and one pivotal, violent event that dragged the first of many daughters beneath the shadow of a curse. Tati’s storyline, which breaks up stories of her family’s near and distant past, promises a crescendo or a reckoning. If anyone is going to wrench the Dupree skeletons out of the closet at last, it’s this sharp, persistent young woman.

Williams’ debut was as hard a read as you might imagine, exploring miscarriage, sexual assault, violence against women, and colorism. What I found interesting about this story that’s less obvious on its face, is the tension between privilege and oppression that appears so often in the lives of these women. The Duprees own land and many of them are light enough to pass for white, though only one makes a harrowing attempt. But because they’re Black and because of slavery’s profound and lasting impacts, they are never out of danger. They ward themselves against harm and heartbreak with little success.

The characters in this debut are richly imagined, and while their stories are laced with the speculative, the toll of generational trauma reads all too true.