For Readers: Blog

It's a Family Affair

Multi-generational stories have been a big trend in publishing this year. A family saga can provide the reader with a fascinating look into an unfamiliar world (especially if you need a break from your own!) or can be a mirror, reflecting the common threads that bind families together. Grab one of these books for an enthralling tale about a family around the corner or across the globe.

The Guest Book by Sarah Blake follows several generations of an upper crust East Coast family from the 1930s to today as they reckon with the secrets on which their family’s legacy was built.

Margaret Wilkerson Sexton’s debut A Kind of Freedom paints an authentic picture of three generations in New Orleans and the intertwining forces of racism, class divides, redemption, and deferred dreams.

For something a little more fantastical, The Old Drift by Namwali Serpell is a strange but mesmerizing epic about three cursed families that can’t seem to escape each other, taking readers  to a near-future Zambia.

If extended families are too complicated for your current reading mood, The Kinship of Secrets by Eugenia Kim focuses on two sisters separated during the Korean War and how their lives branch off as one is raised in America and the other remains in war-torn South Korea.

A cross between short stories and a novel, Before We Visit the Goddess by Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni has plenty of strong female voices, as three generations of mothers and daughters in India and the United States reflect on the life-changing lessons they’ve learned.

Homegoing by Yaa Gyasi is a sweeping epic that follows two half-sisters born in different Ghanian villages and their diverging journeys throughout Africa and the United States, with plenty of detail for fans of historical fiction.

Daniel José Older’s most recent release, The Book of Lost Saints, is a combination of magical realism and literary fiction, and an exploration of Cuban heritage and identity.

Rabeah Ghaffari’s To Keep the Sun Alive takes readers to a family fruit orchard on the cusp of the Iranian Revolution, with a large cast of well-written and compelling characters.

Ashes of Fiery Weather by Kathleen Donohoe is a true epic, chronicling six generations of determined and realistically written Irish-American women surrounded by loss.