Black Cake by Charmaine Wilkerson

I really loved this story, and hope there are more to come, because this is the author's first book. It weaves together aspects of her personal past and present life to create a thought provoking and easily read story. Black cake, both the dessert and the book itself, has a complicated history. The dense, rum-soaked, fruit-packed dessert is a Caribbean tradition at Christmas, Easter and weddings. For those no longer living in the islands, it’s also a strong reminder of home. Eleanor Bennett, too, has a complicated history. As the novel begins, she has just died in Southern California, leaving her daughter, Benny, and son, Byron, with an audio recording full of long-buried secrets. The estranged adult siblings are asked to listen and carry out their dead mother's wishes, which turns out to be a pretty big ask. The story wends together several threads as they relate to the Caribbean, colonization, forced enslavement of Africans and the resulting trade triangles in a way that is both seamless and hard to put down.