by Jacinda Townsend
Contemporary, Feminism, Africa | Published: May 3, 2022 | Goodreads
Shannon, an African American woman, accompanies her boyfriend to Morocco to escape from education bills, medical debt, and the unexpected revelation of her infertility following a serious automobile accident. She comes across a toddler in a pink jacket with a face that resembles hers in the cobblestoned medina of Marrakech. Shannon makes the choice to adopt and raise the girl in Louisville, Kentucky, with the assistance of her boyfriend and a bribed official. However, the girl already has a mother: Souria, an undocumented Mauritanian woman who was trafficked as a youngster and fled to Morocco to make a fresh start in her life.
In rendering Souria’s separation from her family across vast stretches of desert and Shannon’s alienation from her mother under the same roof, Jacinda Townsend brilliantly stages cycles of intergenerational trauma and healing. Linked by the girl who has been a daughter to them both, these unforgettable protagonists move toward their inevitable reckoning.
About the author:
Jacinda Townsend is the author of Saint Monkey, which won the Janet Heidinger Kafka Prize and the James Fenimore Cooper Prize. She is a graduate of the Iowa Writers’ Workshop and teaches in the MFA program at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor.
