The Leaving

A wise and searching novel of a young Black woman, an unexpected pregnancy, and the struggle to overcome a legacy of trauma and mental illness

Sumatra has spent her life yearning for connection with family, friends, and lovers while, almost compulsively, pushing them away. The daughter of a Nigerian immigrant father and a talented but troubled mother, she saw her childhood shattered in an incident that took her years to comprehend. Now, facing an unexpected pregnancy, Sum returns to the States from her adopted home of Beijing, fragile but determined. Discontinuing the medication that kept her dissociative disorder at bay, she revisits her life in a series of memory flashbacks, therapy sessions, and recorded messages for her unborn daughter. As she relives moments of conflict, grief, and trauma—in settings ranging from Baltimore to Barcelona, Brazil to the Philippines—Sum comes to realize that, by searching for herself in other cultures, she has been hiding from the truths of her own life.

Emotionally cataclysmic yet ultimately hopeful, rendered in lyrical, spellbinding prose, The Leaving is a story of the legacy of trauma and mental illness, and of the gifts and burdens we leave to our children.