Red at the Bone by Jaqueline Woodson

This is a sparse and beautifully written girl to woman tale that confronts the indelible marks of youthful indiscretions and the way we explain our adolescence to our adult self. Sometimes these memories act as lessons, other times as hindrances, providing a road map to who we are. In this case, when teenagers Aubrey, son of a single mom, and Iris, from a well-to-do family, come together with the passion and carelessness of young love—a relationship that produces a daughter, Melody—both families swallow their disappointment and resolve to make do.

The beauty of this work is in its seamless shifts from the past to the present and how we the reader are left to reflect on the connections. Melody is deeply conflicted about her mother, who left her with her father and maternal grandparents, Sabe and Po’Boy Simmons, so she could study at Oberlin and not be thwarted by a baby’s demands.

This poignant tale of choices and their aftermath, history and its legacy, will resonate with mothers and daughters. There is pain and hope in equal parts. If trauma is a cursed heirloom handed down through the decades, maybe love is the cure passed upward from the young to the old.