by Maggie Gee
First published 2003
Alfred White hits the ground at his workplace, and everything changes for the White family. His wife May rushes to his side while their three children return home, each carrying their own complicated relationship with their father and each other. The family has spent years avoiding difficult conversations about race and identity, but Alfred's collapse forces them into the same room and the same reckoning. May discovers sides of her husband she never knew existed. The children must face how their father's views shaped them, for better and worse. As Alfred fights for his life, his family fights to understand who they really are when stripped of their comfortable silences. The Whites learn that hatred doesn't just destroy the people it targets. It also eats away at those who carry it, poisoning families from the inside out.
Genres: fiction, family, 21st-century, family-drama
Vibes: emotional, intimate, thought-provoking
Tropes: found-family, unreliable-narrator
416 pages · Paperback · Saqi Books
Content warnings: racism