Make Your Way Home

In Moore’s transportive debut collection, Southern Black men and women contend with ambivalent feelings toward home. Ever Roberts, the protagonist of “When We Go, We Go Downstream,” struggles to carry on a long-distance relationship with a woman named Amari and reflects on his family’s supposed curse, which originated with an ancestor who left a lover to escape from slavery. After an awkward visit with Amari in his hometown of Austin, Ever comforts himself with the thought that their fate is out of his hands (“If there is a curse on his family, even on the dust mote of his particular life, then he cannot be blamed, nobody’s leaving can be his fault”). “All Skin Is Clothing,” a standout, tells the story of a young Kentucky boy who narrowly avoids being struck by a stray bullet. Afterward, his family moves to a nearby suburb where he and his sister struggle to fit in. “Gather Here Again” follows a Charlottesville, Va., woman doing her best to hide the ugly truth of her city’s history of Ku Klux Klan violence from her grandchildren by veiling it as a ghost story. Some of the stories’ resolutions are telegraphed, but the author impresses with her meticulous research (endnotes point to further reading), and the entries strongly evoke the region’s many flavors. This solid collection has much to admire. Agent: Valerie Borchardt, Georges Borchardt, Inc. (July)