Yaa Gyasi’s latest novel carries over many of the concerns about family and the gulfs of diaspora experience, but in the intimate narrative of a neuroscientist trying to come to grips with her brother’s drug overdose and her mother’s crippling depression. The author reflects on the different ways in which faith and science attempt to answer the unfathomable and inchoate, and talks about how the addiction narrative — so often seen through the lens of white, rural poverty — unfolds with distinct nuance and texture in the representation of a young Black sports star whose recovery from injury leads him down a harrowing path. Gyasi also describes a friendship that led her to fascinating impasses in what remain fundamental mysteries in the neuroscience research on addiction.
Also, Kelli Jo Ford, author of Crooked Hallelujah, returns to recommend David Heska Wanbli Weiden's highly acclaimed first novel, Winter Counts.
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