About this item
Solemn Redvine is a precocious Mississippi girl who senses a nearby baby may be her half-sibling: the outcome of her father's mistakes with a married woman who lives in their trailer park. After Solemn witnesses a man throw the baby down a community well, she struggles to understand the event, leaving her forever changed.As Solemn finds refuge in fantasies of stardom as well as friendships with her brother's wife and a nearby girl, the ill-fated baby's doomed mother disappears without a trace. Solemn remains trapped by connections to the missing other woman and an honest cop who suspects more to the story than others on the small local police force want to see. When her father's next mistake - a robbery - lands Solemn in a group home for troubled girls, she meets a Chicago delinquent who wants to escape. There, Solemn must face the truth of who she really is and what she is really made of.
About the Author
Kalisha Buckhanon is the author of SPEAKING OF SUMMER, SOLEMN, CONCEPTION and UPSTATE as well as numerous stories, essays, articles and blogs on her site negression.com. She was a true crime TV commentator on BET, ID Channel and TV One. She and her work featured also in such media as Essence, O Magazine, People, Time, Entertainment Weekly, Cosmo, Marie Claire, Elle, The Guardian/London Observer and more. UPSTATE is an American Library Association ALEX Award winner, Audie Award in Literary Fiction winner, Terry McMillan Young Author Award winner, Hurston-Wright Foundation Debut Fiction Finalist and National Book Foundation "Literature for Justice" title. Kalisha has an M.A. and B.A. in English from University of Chicago, where she was elected into Phi Beta Kappa. Her Creative Writing M.F.A. is from The New School in New York City. She is at work on new projects in her home state of Illinois, where she was born in the small town of Kankakee.
