First published 2016
Felicia Lyons manages three children while her husband works late at the office. She uses breathing exercises and mantras to stay calm when the kids scream her name or fight over toys. Some days she fantasizes about getting in her car and driving away from it all. Then the phone rings one evening. The call forces her to return to Philadelphia, where she grew up. Felicia has hidden parts of her past from her family. Now she must face the secrets she buried and the relatives she left behind. Her deception threatens everything she has built. The trip back home becomes a reckoning with family demons she thought she had escaped. Johnson explores what happens when a mother's carefully constructed life begins to crumble and she must choose between the truth and the dream she created.
Genres: fiction, domestic-fiction, african-american, contemporary, 21st-century, family-drama
Vibes: emotional, intimate, thought-provoking
Tropes: deception, secrets, unreliable-narrator
Setting: Philadelphia
Period: 21st-century
478 pages · Hardcover · Thorndike Press Large Print