This was a beautifully written story of two generations of women, separated by almost a century of time. Josephine, in 1925, is a sharecropper in the South, struggling to get by and dealing with uneasy relations with her new neighbors. In 2017, Ava (a descendant of Josephine) has just moved in with her white grandmother, whose descent into dementia threatens Ava and her son's comfort and safety.

Throughout the story, female bonds run strong, both between (grand)mother and child and between friends. There are so many strong, female characters supporting one another when the going gets tough. I loved the thread of healing that runs through the story as well, and the casting of these healers as being in touch with a more magical, almost supernatural, part of the world. The book dips its toes into magical realism without emphasizing it.

I struggled with the pace of the book, particularly with Josephine's sections. Her story was interesting, at times heartbreak and uplifting at others. But it was slow-moving and I sometimes found myself wanting to get back to Ava's POV. Perhaps this was also because Ava's story was more familiar to me, something that has been told many times and thus easier to latch onto. Sexton's writing is well-crafted but the story was at times difficult to follow and left a lot of loose ends hanging. I would have liked a slightly longer story to give more of a conclusion.

Overall, I felt that the stories told here were important, I just wanted a little more from the execution.

TW: Racism