“Deeply empathetic yet unflinching in its gaze…an unforgettable exploration of responsibility and redemption.”-Celeste Ng
Winner of the 2023 NAACP Image Award for Outstanding Literary Work - Fiction In the six years we've had him, he has been more skittish than fierce, as if aware that one wrong look will spell his doom. You're sitting on the porch nuzzling the dog, a gray mutt of a pit bull who was once sent to die after snapping at a man's face. I watch you now, home from college, that time after graduation when y'all young people either find your way or slide down the slope of uncertainty. Your talents surely defy the notion of a gene pool. I'm telling it in order to lay these ghosts to rest. Medicine has taught me, really taught me, to accept the things I cannot change. I tell this story to stitch their names inside your clothes, too. Their names are stitched inside every white coat I have ever worn. That must not be forgotten.īecause history repeats what we don't remember.Ī year never passes without me thinking of them. But there are people and stories that refuse to be forgotten. Civil Townsend is ready to retire, to find her peace, and to leave the past behind.
Until one day she arrives at the door to learn the unthinkable has happened, and nothing will ever be the same for any of them.ĭecades later, with her daughter grown and a long career in her wake, Dr. As Civil grapples with her role, she takes India, Erica, and their family into her heart. Neither of the Williams sisters has even kissed a boy, but they are poor and Black, and for those handling the family's welfare benefits, that's reason enough to have the girls on birth control. At the Montgomery Family Planning Clinic, she intends to help women make their own choices for their lives and bodies.īut when her first week on the job takes her down a dusty country road to a worn-down one-room cabin, she's shocked to learn that her new patients, Erica and India, are children-just eleven and thirteen years old. Fresh out of nursing school, Civil Townsend has big plans to make a difference, especially in her African American community.
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