This is a story of identity and belonging but also of love and grief and life.
Marilyn met the love of her life at the age of seventeen and together she and James planned to attend the same college/university. Marilyn begins to feel herself becoming a real person within this relationship and not as a money making machine for her mother. When tragedy strikes all of this changes and Marilyn ends up leading a very different life from the one that she had intended to live.
Angie is Marilyn’s daughter and she has been brought up knowing very little about her father and her black ancestry. This leads to her leaving home to seek out her father and her uncle in Los Angeles with the help of her once boyfriend Sam.
The story of Marilyn and Angie and in some ways James and Sam are entwined across the years and the book moves backwards through Marilyn’s life to tell her story and from this the beginnings of Angie’s story.
This is not some romantic account of family and love but rather a thoughtful and complex depiction of what identity, love, family and hope are. It also touches on the difficulties faced by mixed race children.
It is not the type of book that I would normally read but having read it I can honestly say that I enjoyed it and wanted to get to the end to hear about the whole story of Marilyn and Angie.
Marilyn met the love of her life at the age of seventeen and together she and James planned to attend the same college/university. Marilyn begins to feel herself becoming a real person within this relationship and not as a money making machine for her mother. When tragedy strikes all of this changes and Marilyn ends up leading a very different life from the one that she had intended to live.
Angie is Marilyn’s daughter and she has been brought up knowing very little about her father and her black ancestry. This leads to her leaving home to seek out her father and her uncle in Los Angeles with the help of her once boyfriend Sam.
The story of Marilyn and Angie and in some ways James and Sam are entwined across the years and the book moves backwards through Marilyn’s life to tell her story and from this the beginnings of Angie’s story.
This is not some romantic account of family and love but rather a thoughtful and complex depiction of what identity, love, family and hope are. It also touches on the difficulties faced by mixed race children.
It is not the type of book that I would normally read but having read it I can honestly say that I enjoyed it and wanted to get to the end to hear about the whole story of Marilyn and Angie.