Too Precious to Lose: A Memoir of Family, Community, and Possibility

Former associate White House counsel Green’s tender debut unpacks his family’s past in the once thriving Black community of Quince Orchard, Md. The son of a preacher, he traces his path from Yale Law School to Barack Obama’s 2008 campaign, explaining how, as his professional world expanded, he was drawn homeward by the urgency of recording his 95-year-old grandmother’s memories before they faded. The nonlinear narrative moves between his childhood, behind-the-scenes view of Washington, and his interviews with family members. Through these conversations, he reconstructs the history of Quince Orchard, a suburb of Washington, D.C., and illuminates how housing discrimination and other destructive forces shaped the area across the 20th century. Stories of family feuds, contested inheritances, and community triumphs unfold alongside broader histories, including the merger of three formerly segregated Christian congregations in Maryland in the wake of Martin Luther King Jr.’s assassination and the symbolism of Barack Obama’s presidential campaign. Green’s lucid, unadorned prose bolsters a memoir that’s as much about recovering a vanished world as understanding one’s place within it. Readers of family history and overlooked Black American stories will find this especially rewarding. Agent: Sarah Passick and Mia Vitale, Park, Fine & Brower. (Feb.)