fbpx

JBP full logo black

icon ecomm1 icon newsletter1 icon fb1 icon twitter1 icon instagram1

Promise


Rachel Eliza Griffiths


'A magical, magnificent novel, that amounts to a secret history of an America we think we know, but never really knew' Marlon James

 

The people of Salt Point are afraid of the world beyond their rural town. Most of them are born, live and die never having gone more than twenty or thirty miles from houses that are crammed with generations of their families. But something shifts at the end of summer 1957. Change makes its way to Salt Point.

 

The Kindred sisters - Ezra and Cinthy - grew up with an abundance of love. Love from their parents, who let them believe that the stories they tell on stars can come true. Love from their neighbours, the Junketts, the only other Black family in town, whose home is filled with spice-rubbed ribs and ground-shaking hugs. And love for their adopted hometown of Salt Point, a beautiful New England village perched high up on coastal bluffs.

 

But as the girls hit adolescence, their white neighbours, including Ezra's best friend, Ruby, start to see their maturing bodies and minds in a different way. And as the news from distant parts of the country fills with calls for freedom, equality, and justice for Black Americans, the white villagers of Salt Point begin to view the Kindreds and the Junketts as a threat to their way of life. Amidst escalating violence, prejudice, and fear, bold Ezra and watchful Cinthy must reach deep inside the wells of love they've built to commit great acts of heroism and grace on the path to survival.

 

In luminous, richly descriptive writing, Promise celebrates one family's story of resistance. It's a book that will break your heart - and then rebuild it with courage, hope, and love.

 

'A novel so potent, one wonders if it's secretly a magic spell' Kiran Desai

 

Promise Paperback edition by Rachel Eliza Griffiths

Rachel Eliza Griffiths is an artist, poet, and novelist. Her recent hybrid collection of poetry and photography, Seeing the Body, was selected as the winner of the 2021 Hurston/Wright Foundation Award in Poetry, the winner of the 2020 Paterson Poetry Prize, and a finalist for the 2021 NAACP Image Award. Griffiths' work has appeared widely, including The New Yorker, the Paris Review, Best American Poetry (2020, 2021), Tin House, and many others. She lives in New York City.

Category:  Psychology & Social Science
ISBN:  9781399809825
Publisher:  John Murray Press
On sale:  August 2023
Format:  Paperback
eBook ISBN   
BUY ONLINE:
Takealot EB logo reseller loot
Protea Balakudu
Raru Wordsworth_Books.jpg