This dream of a novel takes us to the bleak suburbs of Washington DC, Anacostia to be exact, where we follow the path of Nephthys Kinwell, who taxis people in grief to wherever they need to go in her old green Plymouth, which has a disgruntled ghost of a white woman in the trunk, and which never runs out of gas. She intuits who needs a lift in this magical car. Nephthys, herself, is grieving the loss of her twin brother, Osiris, who went missing years ago. And when her great-nephew shows up at her door one day, she is forced to face that grief. This is a quiet book, not unlike Plainsong by Kent Haruf, winner of the New Yorker Book Award and finalist for the 1999 National Book Award, that will steal your heart. Creatures of Passage, was shortlisted for the Ernest J. Gaines Award for Literary Excellence and a 2021 Notable Book selection by NPR and the Washington Post.
You can find Creatures of Passage by Morowa Yejidé on the New Books Shelf at the Literatures and Languages Library. The catalog record is linked here.
This highlight was written by Karen Huck, Library Specialist for Collections, Events and Outreach at the Literatures and Languages Library.