Transcendent Kingdom by Yaa Gyasi

THis is a deceptive novel, on the one hand it is simply put and straight-forward, but that is just on the surface. Underneath there is a pot boiling. Gifty is a young a Ghanaian-American neuroscientist at Stanford. She is wholly obsessed with her job, she maintains no social life, almost no life at all outside the lab. Her research involves studying the brains of mice. She has devised a behavior testing chamber with a lever that sometimes delivers a tasty treat and sometimes delivers a painful electrical shock. Her motivation is not just a passion for scinece but also a wish to undo the past. Her beloved brother Nana, a young man with an athletic gift, come undone. Gifty cannot change his blackness, but she is aiming to change his demise, his descent into addiction when his ankle injury sidelines him, in sports, but also in life. How Nana became an addict is again, simply put. The underlying answer to how to he might have been saved is much more complex, and rather than dwell in sadness Gifty is reaching for hope.