Casualties of Truth

A Black woman’s life is upended after she runs into a long-lost acquaintance in this messy outing from Francis-Sharma (The Book of the Little Axe). Prudence Wright lives in Washington, D.C., with her lawyer husband, Davis. When they go out to dinner with Matshediso Samuelsson, the new IT specialist at Davis’s firm, it turns out that Matshediso and Prudence previously met when she was a law intern visiting South Africa from the U.S., and the present-day encounter stirs up painful memories for Prudence. In a parallel narrative set in 1996 Johannesburg, Prudence and Matshediso meet while attending the postapartheid Truth and Reconciliation hearings. She then calls him while in a jam at a gas station, where she can’t pay for her fuel. Matshediso comes to her aid just as she fights off a white cop who’s attempting to sexually assault her. Matshediso later tracks down the cop with Prudene in tow, and they slash his tires. Back in the present, Matshediso contacts Prudence against her wishes and makes a compromising demand, dredging up more details about what happened back in Johannesburg. The narrative is bracing but tonally unbalanced, veering haphazardly from a meditation on trauma to a high-stakes thriller. It’s a mixed bag. Agent: Victoria Sanders, Victoria Sanders and Assoc. (Feb.)