A Family Grows In Brooklyn

A TREASURE AWAITS READERS WHO ENCOUNTER Red at the Bone, who descend the staircase with a loose step as 16-year-old Melody does in her coming-of-age party at the start of the novel.

- Joshunda Sanders

Jacqueline Woodson’s latest book for adults looks at a middleclass black family in Brooklyn and the struggles and triumphs that brought them to this moment, celebrating the daughter who was the unexpected product of a teenage romance. The novel is both a uniquely black story about multi-generational love and upward mobility—and a universal American tale of striving, failing, then trying again.

Woodson, internationally renowned for her work for young readers, has published more than 30 books over as many years. In 2014, she won a National Book Award for Brown Girl Dreaming, a middle-grade memoir in verse. In Red at the Bone, the author refines the talent for finding precise language to describe overwhelm and passion, confusion and potential she exhibited in that memoir. In about 200 pages, we are met with Woodson’s vast range, insight and tenderness, particularly in her treatment of young people carrying the weight of old souls.