I received an Advance Readers’ Copy of this book. All opinions are my own. It is on sale now.
This family story follows several characters over the course of decades, primarily in the city of Detroit. Orzo Armstead never arrives home on the day of his 37th birthday. He had lunch with his brother, left work on time, and then simply vanished. His wife Deborah and his teenage daughter Trinity are left without answers but instead must struggle on to piece together the life they have.
We travel backward in time to a younger Deborah and Orzo, to the time when they meet. Deborah is a talented musician, a singer. Orzo is a smart and motivated young man, hampered by the fact of being a black man in the 1970s, but wanting more than anything to be a man who works in an office and supports his family.
We travel forward and follow Trinity as a teenager, as an adult. We see the long shadow her father’s disappearance casts over her life and the way it unfolds through every one of her relationships. And we follow Orzo himself and the truth of what happened to him.
Writing it out like this, it sounds like the books covers a lot, and it does, but it never feels like too much. Deborah and Orzo are both bright and sympathetic characters. It’s easier to root for them and to feel the unfairness and prejudice that they struggle under. Even as they hurt one another and make mistakes, their mistakes feel true to who they are and, as a reader, I could understand them, even if I hated to witness them.
Trinity was harder for me to like. Maybe because she felt closer to being a peer. Maybe because her bad decisions seemed less justifiable to me. I had empathy for her and her choices grew from what she had been through but I found myself more frustrated with her.
The setting of Detroit through the 1970s and 1990s was a great one and I was carried through a city going through drastic change. The racial conflicts and divisions were broadly sketched but gave power and authenticity to the setting and I felt like I gained a better understanding of a city I don’t know much about.
Karissa Reads Books 
It’s funny, I find I’m much ‘harder’ on the characters who are similar in age to me. Almost the more like they are me, the harder I am on them. It’s unfair, but I do it all the time.
You know, I think I am too! That’s an interesting observation.
Detroit is a fascinating city, one that is so huge due to the great migration that led poor southern black families to enter the factors (auto, in particular) and really lift themselves up. Behind all that financial independence, though, was a culture war between white and black and between urban and newly-arrived rural “bumpkins” that would “make the race look bad.”
A lot of that is touched on in this book. I did appreciate that the author didn’t spend tons of time trying to give a history of Detroit but assumed her readers could research on their own.
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