United States
![Rachel Eliza Griffiths - [object Object] author](https://res.cloudinary.com/readsomnia/image/upload/authors/a_B004J7JKJW.jpg)
Promise: A Novel
Two Black sisters growing up in small-town New England fight to protect their home, their bodies, and their dreams as the Civil Rights Movement sweeps the nation in Promise, a "magical, magnificent novel" (Marlon James) from "a startlingly fresh voice" (Jacqueline Woodson).
The people of Salt Point could indeed be fearful about the world beyond themselves; most of them would be born and die without ever having gone more than twenty or thirty miles from houses that were crammed with generations of their families. . . . But something was shifting at the end of summer 1957.
The Kindred sisters-Ezra and Cinthy-have grown up with an abundance of love. Love from their parents, who let them believe that the stories they tell on stars can come true. Love from their neighbors, the Junketts, the only other Black family in town, whose home is filled with spice-rubbed ribs and ground-shaking hugs. And love for their adopted hometown of Salt Point, a beautiful Maine village perched high up on coastal bluffs.
But as the girls hit adolescence, their white neighbors, including Ezra's best friend, Ruby, start to see their maturing bodies and minds in a different way. And as the news from distant parts of the country fills with calls for freedom, equality, and justice for Black Americans, the white villagers of Salt Point begin to view the Kindreds and the Junketts as threats to their way of life. Amid escalating violence, prejudice, and fear, bold Ezra and watchful Cinthy must reach deep inside the wells of love they've built to commit great acts of heroism and grace on the path to survival.
In luminous, richly descriptive writing, Promise celebrates one family's story of resistance. It's a book that will break your heart-and then rebuild it with courage, hope, and love.
The people of Salt Point could indeed be fearful about the world beyond themselves; most of them would be born and die without ever having gone more than twenty or thirty miles from houses that were crammed with generations of their families. . . . But something was shifting at the end of summer 1957.
The Kindred sisters-Ezra and Cinthy-have grown up with an abundance of love. Love from their parents, who let them believe that the stories they tell on stars can come true. Love from their neighbors, the Junketts, the only other Black family in town, whose home is filled with spice-rubbed ribs and ground-shaking hugs. And love for their adopted hometown of Salt Point, a beautiful Maine village perched high up on coastal bluffs.
But as the girls hit adolescence, their white neighbors, including Ezra's best friend, Ruby, start to see their maturing bodies and minds in a different way. And as the news from distant parts of the country fills with calls for freedom, equality, and justice for Black Americans, the white villagers of Salt Point begin to view the Kindreds and the Junketts as threats to their way of life. Amid escalating violence, prejudice, and fear, bold Ezra and watchful Cinthy must reach deep inside the wells of love they've built to commit great acts of heroism and grace on the path to survival.
In luminous, richly descriptive writing, Promise celebrates one family's story of resistance. It's a book that will break your heart-and then rebuild it with courage, hope, and love.
Editorial Reviews
"Promise is forged in a crucible of irrational violence and darkness that paradoxically gives birth to luminous, resilient love. This is a novel so potent, written in such transcendent prose, one wonders if it's secretly a magic spell. It's a stunning achievement."-Kiran Desai, author of The Inheritance of Loss
"This is a magical, magnificent novel that amounts to a secret history of an America we think we know but never really knew, where girls reckon with the beauty and terror of girlhood, mortal Black bodies reckon with immortal Black souls, while America reckons with the terror of its beastly, bloody self. The result bowls us over with shock and grief, but eventually fills our hearts with awe and wonder."-Marlon James, author of Moon Witch, Spider King
"Promise is a stunning exploration of the weight and triumph of legacy, of what it has cost Black Americans to make homes in a country where violence and terror pursue them, and of all of the things it can mean to be called home."-Danielle Evans, author of The Office of Historical Corrections
"A beautifully rendered narrative and a startlingly fresh voice . . . I fell in love with the people between these pages. This is truly the first book in a long time where I had to force myself to stop reading."-Jacqueline Woodson, New York Times bestselling author of Red at the Bone
"At its core, Promise concerns the illusion of security that we, Black Americans, harbor in our souls-that generational ache to believe that we can finally lay down the fear of what potential tragedy awaits us around the next corner, and the one after that. Poetic and powerful, Promise slices through self-delusion with its many faces of heroism, loss, and the grace it takes to find a sense of equality in our hearts."-Walter Mosley, author of Blood Grove
"This is a gorgeous and heart-stopping account of the casual and calculated racism endured by a Black family in 1950s Maine as well as the love and strength that sustain them. . . . Griffiths' considerable talent as a poet creates space ...
"This is a magical, magnificent novel that amounts to a secret history of an America we think we know but never really knew, where girls reckon with the beauty and terror of girlhood, mortal Black bodies reckon with immortal Black souls, while America reckons with the terror of its beastly, bloody self. The result bowls us over with shock and grief, but eventually fills our hearts with awe and wonder."-Marlon James, author of Moon Witch, Spider King
"Promise is a stunning exploration of the weight and triumph of legacy, of what it has cost Black Americans to make homes in a country where violence and terror pursue them, and of all of the things it can mean to be called home."-Danielle Evans, author of The Office of Historical Corrections
"A beautifully rendered narrative and a startlingly fresh voice . . . I fell in love with the people between these pages. This is truly the first book in a long time where I had to force myself to stop reading."-Jacqueline Woodson, New York Times bestselling author of Red at the Bone
"At its core, Promise concerns the illusion of security that we, Black Americans, harbor in our souls-that generational ache to believe that we can finally lay down the fear of what potential tragedy awaits us around the next corner, and the one after that. Poetic and powerful, Promise slices through self-delusion with its many faces of heroism, loss, and the grace it takes to find a sense of equality in our hearts."-Walter Mosley, author of Blood Grove
"This is a gorgeous and heart-stopping account of the casual and calculated racism endured by a Black family in 1950s Maine as well as the love and strength that sustain them. . . . Griffiths' considerable talent as a poet creates space ...
Readers Top Reviews
BxChic(k)
This was SO well written! We don’t often see how the North is just as ruthless toward Black people as the South. This glimpse of life in Maine, where it’s supposedly more safe, was eye opening and frequently terrifying, and often deeply sad. Contrasting the experience of even a poor white girl with her Black friends, shows the deep roots of hatred that bear seeds even today. Loved it. Made me think, made me cry. Most highly recommend. A stunner.
drs
Set in a small town in New England, Promise uses the protagonists Ezra and Cinthy (2 African American young teenagers) to develop the plot of a series of promises kept and broken. The promise of education, friendship, family, and finally life and death. Those promises are met with the reality of the times, of whites afraid of the changing landscape and the real violence that ensues. Yet, there is a plot thread of promise through the darkest of experiences. A challenging read but a good one.
Kimberly Kieser
"Promise" by Rachel Eliza Griffiths absolutely gutted me. It is a stunningly beautiful, though horrifically tragic, novel. It reads almost like poetry; the writing is rich, complex, and gorgeous. It is a no-holds-barred and non-whitewashed depiction of the Civil Rights era, and how life for Black Americans could be just as bad in the north as in the south. The characters' actions and words are realistic for the time period, so there is prevalent racism and some use of the "n-word," I fell in love with the main characters, sisters Ezra and Cinthy, and admired their strength and resiliency through much pain and hardship, and their determination to succeed in a world where they were deemed less-than simply because of the color of their skin. "Promise" is a compelling read and truly is literary fiction/historical fiction at its best. Though set in the past, this book is still very much relevant today and readers who like to delve into the past so that they can learn from it and thus create a better future will love this book. Many thanks to NetGalley, the author, and the publisher for the incredible opportunity and privilege of reading an advanced copy of this tremendous and important book. It is destined to be one of the best of the year.
Bonnye Reed Fry
I received a complimentary ARC (Advanced Readers Copy) of this exceptional novel from Netgalley, author Rachel Eliza Griffiths, and publisher Random House. Thank you all for sharing your hard work with me. I have read Promise of my own volition, and this review reflects my honest opinion of this work. I am adding this author to my must-read list - she tells it like it is. The 1960s and 1970s were difficult times to be a young adult in America. Black or white, male or female, rich or poor we were all pretty equally hampered or ham-strung by racial unrest, the Viet Nam war, and the evolving social mores of American life. Cities and towns were no longer isolated and allowed to mature slowly - television made sure that we were all stuck in the same boat. Comparing life from a 1950s post-WWII family to that of the 1960s and 1970s involves a very fast-forward in expectations and possibilities, but also in those many things that restrict freedom. Children from the 1990s and 2000s wouldn't even recognize that "Leave It to Beaver" world. And these children, southern black kids living in a white world in Salt Point, Maine in 1967 had many strikes against them. This is a sad tale, based on that very real world. Thank God we have come beyond that. Nowhere near far enough, but there has been progress. Thank you, Ms. Griffiths, for reminding us of how it was. And in some places, still is. Our children and grandchildren all deserve a much better world. We as a nation have to make it happen.
Short Excerpt Teaser
1
The day before our first day of school always signaled the end of the time Ezra and I loved most. Not time like the clocks that ticked and rang their alarms every morning; we knew that time didn't really begin or end. What we meant by time was happiness, a careless joy that sprawled its warm, sun-stained arms through our days and dreams for eight glorious weeks until our teachers arrived back in our lives, and our parents remembered their rules about shoes, bathing, vocabulary quizzes, and home training.
More than anything, we prayed that the air would remain mild for as long as possible, mid-October even, so that we could retain some of our summer independence, free to roam the land we knew and loved. We weren't yet grown, but even the adults could pinpoint when time would tell us we would no longer be young.
We mourned summertime's ending and made predictions about autumn and ourselves. Mostly we repeated all the different ways that summer was more honest than the rest of the year. It was the only time we could wear shorts and cropped tops with little comment from our mother. Ezra and I were allowed to walk nearly anywhere we wanted-in the other seasons, we needed permission even to walk to the village docks. And the eating! How we could eat! Mama loosened her apron strings about salt and sugar. Each day, it felt like we were eating from the menu of our dreams-fresh corn, ice cream, sliced tomatoes with coarse salt and pepper, chilled lobster, root beer floats, watermelon, oysters, crab and shrimp salads, fried chicken, homemade lemon or raspberry sorbet, grilled peaches, potato salad, and red popsicles.
In the summer, the wildflowers returned, even in the village square. Some dead local official once believed the square, arranged around a small pond with a handful of benches, was a civil idea. Indeed, it would have been charming except there was the sea. Steps away from the square, down the narrow central passage of our village, the main street opened into a slender, shining pier where everything happened.
The day before our first day of school always signaled the end of the time Ezra and I loved most. Not time like the clocks that ticked and rang their alarms every morning; we knew that time didn't really begin or end. What we meant by time was happiness, a careless joy that sprawled its warm, sun-stained arms through our days and dreams for eight glorious weeks until our teachers arrived back in our lives, and our parents remembered their rules about shoes, bathing, vocabulary quizzes, and home training.
More than anything, we prayed that the air would remain mild for as long as possible, mid-October even, so that we could retain some of our summer independence, free to roam the land we knew and loved. We weren't yet grown, but even the adults could pinpoint when time would tell us we would no longer be young.
We mourned summertime's ending and made predictions about autumn and ourselves. Mostly we repeated all the different ways that summer was more honest than the rest of the year. It was the only time we could wear shorts and cropped tops with little comment from our mother. Ezra and I were allowed to walk nearly anywhere we wanted-in the other seasons, we needed permission even to walk to the village docks. And the eating! How we could eat! Mama loosened her apron strings about salt and sugar. Each day, it felt like we were eating from the menu of our dreams-fresh corn, ice cream, sliced tomatoes with coarse salt and pepper, chilled lobster, root beer floats, watermelon, oysters, crab and shrimp salads, fried chicken, homemade lemon or raspberry sorbet, grilled peaches, potato salad, and red popsicles.
In the summer, the wildflowers returned, even in the village square. Some dead local official once believed the square, arranged around a small pond with a handful of benches, was a civil idea. Indeed, it would have been charming except there was the sea. Steps away from the square, down the narrow central passage of our village, the main street opened into a slender, shining pier where everything happened.
