Asha Bandele
             A wonderful first novel, about the very complex ties that bind mothers and daughters alike. In pain, the inevitable sacrifices that redefine love, passion, and commitment. In the memory of the characters, is where this story lies. Reminiscing about ones past, made the words on the paper come alive.
             Generation to generation, the characters of this story came to life. Upon the first chapter, Aya Rivers, a young pulsating nineteen-year-old black girl is introduced. Aya is an average teen, who like many other teens, believe that they should have more independence, from their mothers' over protective embrace. Only to end up inside a dream, a place where she burns, internally, outrageously, incomprehensibly. "Mama, she cries from deep down inside herself. Mama, she cries and her terror is palpable. Mama she cries but no sound or tear." Next, to come, Miriam, mother of Aya, who can be easily described as an average mother. One who seems rigid, excessively shielding of her own, and inattentively ignoring the needs and wants of her own, however, doing it all in the name of love. A mother whom, like her kid, goes through all the emotional changes life brings as a teen, mentally today, as she did years ago.
             On a winter night in Brooklyn, a white police officer shot Aya Rivers, a vibrant nineteen-year-old black girl, in a case of mistaken identity. Miriam, a rigid and guarded woman, rushes to the hospital. As Miriam desperately waits at Aya's bedside, she falls back into memories of her own youth, when her life took a series of tragic turns as she struggled for independence and dealt with the end of her relationship with Aya's father. As Miriam's recollections of love and regret descend upon her, a woman who has spent nearly everyday of her life in an emotional prison finds that her wounds slowly give way
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