Lady Moses — Lucinda Roy

This powerful debut novel is the story of Jacinta Moses, the child of a passionate and courageous love. Jacinta's father is a black African writer, Simon Moses; her mother, Louise, is a white British actress. Her father dies when she is young, sending her mother into a state of madness and depression. Impoverished and alone, Jacinta longs for a better life. As she grows older, however, prejudice--her own as well as others'--leads her to make adventurous but damaging choices. Jacinta flees from London to the American South and marries a white man. When her daughter, Lady, is born with a disability, ruining her hopes for a picture-perfect life, Jacinta travels to Africa to search for answers in her father's homeland. Her experiences there will change her forever. In Africa she is forced to draw on her family's great strengths and weave something brilliant out of their history of pain.

Lady Moses is about being both black and white. It is about passionate characters in extraordinary situations; about how one woman employs her creativity, intelligence, and strength to forge an identity. With its unflinching insight and dazzling prose, Lady Moses marks the entry of a sparkling new voice in African American fiction.