Leaving
A Novel
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- $11.99
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- $11.99
Publisher Description
In 1959, newly-widowed and pregnant Ruby Washington and her thirteen-year-old half brother, Easton, board a bus in rural South Carolina, destined for Oakland, California. There, far from the violent events that forced her to flee her home, Ruby hopes to make a new life for her family.
Ruby gives birth to a daughter, Lida, and strives to raise the girl and Easton. But as their Oakland neighborhood changes during the turbulent 1960s, the three are driven apart by forces that Ruby cannot control. Easton becomes involved with civil rights activism and the Black Panthers; Lida, keeping a hurtful family secret to herself, spirals into a cycle of dependency and denial. Finally, Lida's sons Love LeRoy and Li'l Pit must fend for themselves in the inhospitable streets of America, leaving one city for another, searching for a home.
Centered around three generations of a family and set against the larger dispossession of African-Americans, Leaving is a blend of history and intimately-observed everyday life-a remarkable debut novel.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Dry covers plenty of political and historical ground in this epic, multigenerational debut novel, an earnest but derivative saga that chronicles the efforts of an African-American family to overcome the inequities of racial injustice. The story begins in 1959, when matriarch Ruby Washington travels from her rural South Carolina home to Oakland in search of a better life. But by leaving, she unknowingly sets off a cycle of poverty and violence that will mar the lives of her children. The most intriguing subplot is that of her charismatic half-brother, Easton, a potential civil rights leader who survives a difficult trip to attend the march at Selma, Ala., after getting involved with a white girl, only to get shot by police back in Oakland. The other major subplots are familiar: Ruby's daughter, Lida, falls victim to heroin, while Lida's son, Love, struggles to escape the clutches of the Oakland hip-hop gangs. Dry is a solid storyteller with plenty of compassion for his characters, but unfortunately they never rise above the level of stereotypes, and the author's decision to skip back and forth chronologically in his narrative rather than to relate each character's tale is distracting at best. The result is a generic retelling of a struggle that's been detailed with more flair, grit and verve by other writers.
