Red at the Bone

Published:21 Jan 2021

Longlisted for the Women’s Prize for Fiction 2020

*** ONE OF THE BOOKS OF THE YEAR FOR: New York Times; Washington Post; Time

With urgent, vital insights into questions of class, gender, race, history, queerness and sex’ New York Times An unexpected teenage pregnancy brings together two families from different social classes, and exposes the private hopes, disappointments and longings that can bind or divide us. From the New York Times-bestselling and National Book Award-winning author of Another Brooklyn and Brown Girl Dreaming. Brooklyn, 2001.

It is the evening of sixteen-year-old Melody’s coming of age ceremony in her grandparents’ brownstone. Watched lovingly by her relatives and friends, making her entrance to the music of Prince, she wears a special custom-made dress – the very same dress that was sewn for a different wearer, Melody’s mother, for a celebration that ultimately never took place. Unfurling the history of Melody’s family – from the 1921 Tulsa race massacre to post 9/11 New York – Red at the Bone explores sexual desire, identity, class, and the life-altering facts of parenthood, as it looks at the ways in which young people must so often make fateful decisions about their lives before they have even begun to figure out who they are and what they want to be