A Jamaican woman abandons her daughter for a chance to reunite with her childhood friend turned lover in this wrenching second novel from Dennis-Benn (Here Comes the Sun). Adoring letters from Cicely, who left several years earlier, inspire Patsy to emigrate from Jamaica to America, but when she arrives in New York in 1998, her dreams of a romantic reunion are dashed by the discovery that Cicely has married an abusive husband. Forced to set out on her own, Patsy finds work as a bathroom attendant and a nanny. Meanwhile, Tru, her six-year-old daughter, is still in Jamaica under the care of her father, who helps to ease the girl's devastation by teaching her to play soccer, a game she excels at. Though Patsy has decided that "the absence of a mother is more dignified than the presence of a distant one," as she settles into a sustainable life over the next decade, Tru struggles with depression and self-harm. Patsy's ambivalence about motherhood transforms this otherwise familiar immigrant narrative into an immersive study in unintended consequences, where even the push Patsy's new girlfriend gives her to try and make amends, by sending a gift to Tru, leads to disaster. Out of that debacle, though, a chance for rapprochement appears, one that sets the stage for Tru to turn her athletic talent into the kind of life her mother is still grasping at. This is a marvelous novel. (June) © Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.

When Patsy finally gets a U.S. travel visa in 1998, she is so sure that she is neither a good mother nor capable of becoming one that she plans to leave her young daughter, Tru, behind in Jamaica and never look back. There's something pulling Patsy, too, the promise of reunion with her girlhood best friend turned lover, Cicely, who left Jamaica a decade ago. But things quickly fall apart when Patsy arrives in Brooklyn to a less-welcoming situation than Cicely suggested in her letters. As Patsy survives the mind-numbing terror of undocumented life, stories from her past seep in to reveal her familiarity with hardship and a well of strength that is nonetheless invisible to her. Meanwhile, Tru deals with her own terror, suffering from her mother's abandonment while living with her father and his family, strangers to her at first. Ten years later, stoic teen Tru is almost undone by the loneliness of her gnawing depression and feelings of queerness, unaware that her mother, now a Manhattan nanny, shares both. Dennis-Benn (Here Comes the Sun, 2016) builds big worlds inside and outside of her touchable characters, writing through their knotty love in all its failures and mercies in this empathic intergenerational epic of womanhood and inheritance.--Annie Bostrom Copyright 2019 Booklist

Redemptive parallel stories examine themes of identity, belonging, and self-fulfillment in Dennis-Benn's (Here Comes the Sun) latest. Patsy feels her dreams were deferred by early motherhood, so she leaves her five-year-old daughter Tru with the girl's father in Jamaica and comes to America with no intention to return. Patsy's intent is to reconnect with her best friend and lover, Cicely, who immigrated earlier. Upon arrival, Patsy soon realizes Cicely's supposed "marriage of convenience" is complicated. Cicely doesn't want to leave her husband and son. Patsy, undocumented, ends up raising other people's children while, consumed by guilt, she has no contact with her own daughter. At the same time, Tru is growing up within a family she hardly knows. She battles depression and feelings of not belonging while navigating her queer identity. Her entire life is overshadowed by her absent mother. Tru turns to self-harm to survive emotionally, but she is gifted athletically and her father, Roy, bonds with her by teaching her to play soccer. In the climax of the story, Patsy and Tru's stories intersect in dramatic fashion while leaving room for healing. VERDICT Sharon Gordon beautifully captures the lilt of the many Jamaican voices as well as conveying the ambiguity of Patsy and Tru's thoughts and feelings. This story may be better listened to than read. Highly recommended.--Judy Murray, Monroe Cty. Lib. Syst., Temperance, MI