Description

Watkinss prose is effortless and forthright This is an impressive feat of storytelling Its a difficult read and a tender story of silences and secrets Its a novel about coming home despite that home being broken And its a brave triumph of a novel that readers wont forget long after finishing it
The New York Times Book Review

Named a Most Anticipated Book of the Year by Good Morning America Essence Esquire The Root Bustle Ebony PopSugar Ms The Millions

From a stunning new voicecomes a powerful debut novel Perish about a Black Texanfamily exploring the effectsof inherited trauma andintergenerational violence asthe family comes togetherto say goodbye to theirmatriarch on her deathbed

Bear it or perish yourself Those are the words Helen Jean hears that fateteful night in her cousins outhouse that change the trajectory of her life

Spanning decades Perish tracks the choices Helen Jeanthe matriarch of the Turner familymakes and the way those choices have rippled across generations from her children to her grandchildren and beyond

Told in alternating chapters Perish follows four members of the Turner family Julie B a woman who regrets her wasted youth and the time spent under Helen Jeans thumb Alex a police officer grappling with a dark and twisted past Jan a mother of two who yearns to go to school and leave Jerusalem Texas and all of its trauma behind for good and Lydia a woman whose marriage is falling apart because her body cant seem to stay pregnant as theyre called home to say goodbye to their mother and grandmother

This familys reunion unearths longkept secrets and forces each member to ask themselves important questions about who is deserving of forgiveness and who bears the cross of blame

Set in vividly drawn Texas and tackling themes like trauma legacy faith home class raceand more this beautiful yet heartwrenching novel will appeal to anyone who is interested in the intricacies of family and the ways bonds can be made maintained or irrevocably broken