Discover the acclaimed author of Red Island House Andrea Leeâs first novelâa coming-of-age classic that follows a young Black woman through her middle-class childhood in the suburbs of Philadelphia and her travels as an adult in France that captures âthe hidden world of mind and heartâ (LA Times).
At once far-reaching and intimate, this novel in stories begins in Paris, where Sarah Phillips has fled after graduating from Harvard. In successive flashbacks, we learn of Sarahâs proper middle-class upbringing as a ministerâs daughter in a Black suburb of Philadelphia. Each layer of the past reveals the process that transformed her early sense of security into one of estrangement and escape, while her adventures slowly lead her to contemplate the eventual prospect of a return.
Like the loop of time it chronicles, Andrea Leeâs brilliant and revelatory debut novel, now considered a classic of Black American literature, traces essential issues of identity and affiliation that canât be easily settled, and its nuance and resonance remains as timely as ever.