Life and Other Love Songs

Informationen zum Autor Anissa Gray is the author of the novel The Care and Feeding of Ravenously Hungry Girls . She is also an award-winning journalist whose work has been featured in The Washington Post , CNN, and The Cut. She lives in Atlanta, Georgia, with her wife. Klappentext "A father's sudden disappearance exposes the private fears, dreams, longings, and joys of a Black American family in the late decades of the twentieth century, in this page-turning and intimate new novel from the author of The Care and Feeding of Ravenously Hungry Girls. It's a warm, bright October afternoon, and Ozro Armstead walks out into the brilliant sunshine on his thirty-seventh birthday. At home, his wife Deborah and daughter Trinity prepare a surprise celebration; down the street, his brother waves as Oz heads back to his office after having lunch together. But he won't make it to the party or even to his briefcase back at his desk. He's about to disappear. In the days, months, and years to follow, Deborah and Trinity look backward and forward as they piece together the life of the man they love, but whom they come to realize they might never have truly known. In a gripping narrative that moves from the Great Migration to 1970s Detroit and 1990s New York, we follow the hopes, triumphs, losses, and secrets that build up and tear apart an American family."-- Leseprobe Trinity Spring 1989 It wasn't like any funeral or burial or postburial I'd ever imagined. Not that I'd ever really imagined those things. But as I watched the cars line up along the curb, freshly arrived from the cemetery, all I could think about was the incredible strangeness of the funeral, burial and now, postburial we were all enduring. Everyone was piling out of their cars. They formed a kind of procession that moved over neatly mowed grass to the sidewalk. They made their way up the sloped driveway to the stone walkway and approached the tan brick house and the unlocked screen door that belonged to what was left of my family. I hung back, leaving the hosting duties to my mother, a more than capable committee of one. She was standing next to the white maple coffee table where she'd stacked coasters and yellow, square cocktail napkins. She'd cooked, too, because the days of people bringing over casseroles and platters of food to fortify our bereaved family had ended years ago. Mrs. Neilson, though, from next door had come by with a vanilla pound cake earlier. The same pale, bland, aggressively bumpy cake she'd brought us when we moved to Bloomfield Hills fifteen years ago. And then again, years later, after my dad vanished. My grandmother made a spot for the cake on the dining table where we'd set up a crowded buffet of roasted chicken, sliced and splayed artfully on two big platters with sprigs of parsley. There were also boiled potatoes, green beans and assorted sweets. I hefted the cake up next to a platter of brownies and chocolate chip cookies that my mother had bought at the A&P. She was a master of most of the homemaking arts. She crocheted scarves and sewed complete outfits with personalized labels embroidered with Created by Deborah Armstead. She could pack a good lunch and cook an even better dinner, but she'd never been much of a baker. "Cut her some slack," my father used to say in a kind of backhanded defense of her various sagging cakes and soggy pies. "When I met her, she was just as likely to burn water as not." My mother was standing perfect-posture tall in the living room, a pale-yellow room made brighter by the scent of hyacinths carried in on the breeze. She was smoothing her navy blue skirt and matching jacket, smiling as the first of the visitors came through the door. Her long, blue-black hair that people had admired for as long as I could remember was pulled into a neat bun. She was graying at her temples. I'd noticed the graying earlier that morning as ...

Autorentext

Anissa Gray is the author of the novel The Care and Feeding of Ravenously Hungry Girls. She is also an award-winning journalist whose work has been featured in The Washington Post, CNN, and The Cut. She lives in Atlanta, Georgia, with her wife.

Klappentext

"A father's sudden disappearance exposes the private fears, dreams, longings, and joys of a Black American family in the late decades of the twentieth century, in this page-turning and intimate new novel from the author of The Care and Feeding of Ravenously Hungry Girls. It's a warm, bright October afternoon, and Ozro Armstead walks out into the brilliant sunshine on his thirty-seventh birthday. At home, his wife Deborah and daughter Trinity prepare a surprise celebration; down the street, his brother waves as Oz heads back to his office after having lunch together. But he won't make it to the party or even to his briefcase back at his desk. He's about to disappear. In the days, months, and years to follow, Deborah and Trinity look backward and forward as they piece together the life of the man they love, but whom they come to realize they might never have truly known. In a gripping narrative that moves from the Great Migration to 1970s Detroit and 1990s New York, we follow the hopes, triumphs, losses, and secrets that build up and tear apart an American family."--

Zusammenfassung
“Musical in structure—the octaves rise when the music calls for it; truths are revealed by the invisible beats of this gorgeous, rich story” –Ann Napolitano, New York Times bestselling author of Hello Beautiful (Oprah’s Book Club Pick)

“Riveting, rhythmic, transcendent...a stellar family saga.”—Jacqueline Woodson, New York Times bestselling author of Red at the Bone

Named a Most Anticipated Book by Essence ∙ Real Simple ∙ Good Housekeeping ∙ Atlanta-Journal Constitution ∙ The Root ∙ SheReads ∙ Atlanta Magazine ∙ Zibby Mag
 
A father’s sudden disappearance exposes the private fears, dreams, longings, and joys of a Black American family in the late decades of the twentieth century, in this page-turning and intimate new novel from the author of The Care and Feeding of Ravenously Hungry Girls.

It’s a warm, bright October afternoon, and Ozro Armstead walks out into the brilliant sunshine on his thirty-seventh birthday. At home, his wife Deborah and daughter Trinity prepare a surprise celebration; down the street, his brother waves as Oz heads back to his office after having lunch together.
 
But he won’t make it to the party or even to his briefcase back at his desk. He's about to disappear.
 
In the days, months, and years to follow, Deborah and Trinity look backward and forward as they piece together the life of the man they love, but whom they come to realize they might never have truly known.
 
In a gripping narrative that moves from the Great Migration to 1970s Detroit and 1990s New York, we follow the hopes, triumphs, losses, and secrets that build up and tear apart an American family.

Leseprobe
Trinity

Spring 1989

It wasn't like any funeral or burial or postburial I'd ever imagined. Not that I'd ever really imagined those things. But as I watched the cars line up along the curb, freshly arrived from the cemetery, all I could think about was the incredible strangeness of the funeral, burial and now, postburial we were all enduring. Everyone was piling out of their cars. They formed a kind of procession that moved over neatly mowed grass to the sidewalk. They made their way up the sloped driveway to the stone walkway and approached the tan brick house and the unlocked screen door that belonged to what was left of my family.

I hung back, leaving the hosting duties to my mother, a more than capable committee of one. She was standing next to the white maple coffee table where she'd stacked coasters and yellow, squa…