“Astonishingly powerful. . . . Ms. Mathis gives us a haunting—and, yes, hopeful—glimpse of the possibility of redemption and the resilience of the human spirit.” —The New York Times

“A remarkable page-turner of a novel . . . spans decades and covers dreams lost, found and denied.” —Chicago Tribune
  
“Enthralling. . . . One remarkably resilient woman is placed against the hopes and struggles of millions of African Americans who held this nation to its promise.” —The Washington Post
 
“Captivate[s] from the first pages. . . . As certainly as August Wilson did in the plays of his twentieth-century cycle, Mathis is chronicling our nation.” —The Boston Globe

“Raw and intimate. . . . Gracefully told. . . . Deeply felt. . . . Compelling.” —The New York Times Book Review

“The opening pages of Ayana’s debut took my breath away. I can’t remember when I read anything that moved me in quite this way, besides the work of Toni Morrison.” —Oprah Winfrey

“A triumph. . . . Magnificently structured, and a sentence-by-sentence treasure—lyric, direct, and true.” —Salon

“A dazzling debut, rich in language and psychological insight. . . . Mathis’s characters are those rarest of fictional creations: real living, breathing people.” —Huffington Post