Good Reads / Community Library Notes
The Almost Sisters
Joshilyn Jackson
Review by Priscilla Comen
The Almost Sisters
Joshilyn Jackson
Review by Priscilla Comen
The Almost Sisters by Joshilyn Jackson is about a thirty-eight year old single woman, Leia, who draws and writes cartoon stories for publications. She has a one-night stand with a handsome black man and finds herself pregnant with no way to find him. It’s also about her grandmother, Birchie, who lives with her life long best friend, a black woman, Wattie. Birchie suffers from dementia and says strange things at the church fish fry.
When Leia and her niece Lavender go to visit Grandma in the deep South, they discover a locked trunk in the attic that contains ancient body bones. Leia has taken Lavender with her because Lav’s mother, Rachel, Leia’s step-sister, threw her husband, Jake, out of the house for infidelity. When all theses characters get together, it makes for a chaotic, fun-filled drama.
Martina Mack is the “bitchy” neighbor who bugs Grandma Birchie and asks why she didn’t bring her father’s body back to his family’s cemetery plot from Charleston where he died. Could the bones in the trunk be his? While waiting for everyone to go to church, Leia texts Jake and tells him to call his daughter, Lavender, and to quit running away from his mistakes. Lavender, with her teen-age knowledge of computers, somehow locates the black Superman who was Leia’s lover for a night.
Leia begins to text him and he answers her. When Leia sees Lavender sneak out of the house one night, she follows her and watches her wrap toilet paper around Martina Mack’s house and trees. Martina aims a gun at them and Leia grabs it. Martina tells Leia that Wattie, Birchie’s best friend and companion, will be in trouble as an accomplice to the killing of the dead man in the attic. Martina uses the “n” word and Leia realizes there are two Souths. This becomes a serious novel about racism. Author Jackson surprises us with a startling denouement. Did twenty year old Birchie kill her father with a hammer blow to the head? Is Birchie’s best friend Wattie, really her half sister? What does the DNA test show? Will Leia get together with her Superman?
Enjoy this dilemma from the new fiction shelf of the Mendocino Community Library.
When Leia and her niece Lavender go to visit Grandma in the deep South, they discover a locked trunk in the attic that contains ancient body bones. Leia has taken Lavender with her because Lav’s mother, Rachel, Leia’s step-sister, threw her husband, Jake, out of the house for infidelity. When all theses characters get together, it makes for a chaotic, fun-filled drama.
Martina Mack is the “bitchy” neighbor who bugs Grandma Birchie and asks why she didn’t bring her father’s body back to his family’s cemetery plot from Charleston where he died. Could the bones in the trunk be his? While waiting for everyone to go to church, Leia texts Jake and tells him to call his daughter, Lavender, and to quit running away from his mistakes. Lavender, with her teen-age knowledge of computers, somehow locates the black Superman who was Leia’s lover for a night.
Leia begins to text him and he answers her. When Leia sees Lavender sneak out of the house one night, she follows her and watches her wrap toilet paper around Martina Mack’s house and trees. Martina aims a gun at them and Leia grabs it. Martina tells Leia that Wattie, Birchie’s best friend and companion, will be in trouble as an accomplice to the killing of the dead man in the attic. Martina uses the “n” word and Leia realizes there are two Souths. This becomes a serious novel about racism. Author Jackson surprises us with a startling denouement. Did twenty year old Birchie kill her father with a hammer blow to the head? Is Birchie’s best friend Wattie, really her half sister? What does the DNA test show? Will Leia get together with her Superman?
Enjoy this dilemma from the new fiction shelf of the Mendocino Community Library.