TRIGGER WARNING

by a police officer neighbor. Chapters from the perspectives of different characters, including Myron, Enix, and Ruth’s childhood friend Clarisse, who’s bipolar, slowly reveal background—not for readerly suspense, but to demonstrate how distanced Ruth is from her past. She and her family live in Louisville, Kentucky, where Enix attends an all\u002Dgirls private school that they chose but now loathe. The author highlights constant microaggressions the family faces partly through the lens of Myron’s best friend, Anthony, a white fellow lawyer who tries way too hard to seem Black—and whose friendship to both Myron and Ruth matters to the deliberately tangled plot. After Ruth and Myron’s house burns down, she files for divorce and takes Enix on a cross\u002Dcountry car trip so poorly planned and executed that the teen chooses to fly home to her father rather than meet her unknown aunt, Wendy, in Sacramento. Whether it’s Myron’s skepticism about his new girlfriend, Paulina\u003B Clarisse’s boredom with a psych ward’s activities\u003B or the loving welcome Wendy offers Ruth, each character’s attitudes and actions resonate with authentic observation that speaks to the author’s dedication page which lists several dozen names (including that of Breonna Taylor) “and the incalculable number of others who’ve suffered and died under the heel of state\u002Dsponsored terrorism since the very inception of the state. And for their families, and their communities, and all of us who struggle to heal.”"