"I struggle to find the words to describe this book—which is fitting, because it's a story about what we do when words fail us.
This book will trouble you and will break your heart. Perhaps it will make you wonder about the scholars and students you pass in this or any university town. What are they trying to achieve? What will be the consequences of their strivings? Will history note who they brushed aside or burned along the way?"
Publisher Algonquin Books
Publication Date 2016-03-08
Section New Hardcover - Fiction / All Staff Suggestions / Fiction Suggestions / Nell P.
Format Hardcover
ISBN 9781616204679
The Freeman family--Charles, Laurel, and their daughters, teenage Charlotte and nine-year-old Callie--have been invited to the Toneybee Institute in rural Massachusetts to participate in a research experiment. They will live in an apartment on campus with Charlie, a young chimp abandoned by his mother. The Freemans were selected for the experiment because they know sign language; they are supposed to teach it to Charlie and welcome him as a member of their family.
Isolated in their new, nearly all-white community not just by their race but by their strange living situation, the Freemans come undone. And when Charlotte discovers the truth about the Institute’s history of questionable studies, the secrets of the past begin to invade the present.
The power of this novel resides in Kaitlyn Greenidge’s undeniable storytelling talents. What appears to be a story of mothers and daughters, of sisterhood put to the test, of adolescent love and grown-up misconduct, and of history’s long reach, becomes a provocative and compelling exploration of America’s failure to find a language to talk about race.
