Long After We Are Gone by Terah Shelton Harris – 432 pages
ARC from Sourcebooks Landmark and Netgalley for an honest review
Book Blurb:
“Don’t let the white man take the house.”
These are the last words King Solomon says to his son before he dies. Now all four Solomon siblings must return to North Carolina to save the Kingdom, their ancestral home and 200 acres of land, from a development company, who has their sights set on turning the valuable waterfront property into a luxury resort.
While fighting to save the Kingdom, the siblings must also save themselves from the secrets they’ve been holding onto. Junior, the oldest son and married to his wife for 11 years, is secretly in love with another man. Second son, Mance, can’t control his temper, which has landed him in prison more than once. CeCe, the oldest daughter and a lawyer in New York City, has embezzled thousands of dollars from her firm’s clients. Youngest daughter, Tokey, wonders why she doesn’t seem to fit into this family, which has left an aching hole in her heart that she tries to fill in harmful ways.
My Review: 4.25 stars
Long After We Are Gone by Terah Shelton Harris is a book that took me to North Carolina and introduced me to the most broken, lonely and misguided group of siblings who reconnect after their patriarch dies.
Is the premise new, not at all; but these characters make the story come alive as their pain rises to the surface. Each of them has significantly different issues. Some readers may find that too much, but I read it as realistic. Eating disorders, weaponizing sex, deafness, secreted homosexuality, motherless children, anger management, and fighting for their land are just a handful of the themes braided through the novel.
The book kept me engaged from the start and I was invested in the outcome of their land and individual personal fates. I had no clue about the concept of heir property which is at the heart of the book. With no will or papers left by King (their father), developers do their best to swindle the land from the original landowners.
I really enjoyed this one! Very different than Harris’s first novel One Summer in Savannah, but equally as good.
Quotes I liked:
What are we but what we add and subtract from ourselves.”
“Her expression tells the story of her true feelings; the pain behind her eyes does not.”
“Come on…you treat an outside wound with rubbing alcohol and an inside wound with drinking alcohol.”
“She’s always reading, never too far from a book, always lost in a fictional world.”
“Being angry is easy. Loving someone is not. Distance works wonders at quelling emotions. Proximity does not.”
“We are all broken in some way. Pieced back together anyway we can.”
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