Promise by Rachel Eliza Griffiths, John Murray
The world of the Kindred sisters is at once powerful and vulnerable and that tension holds this heart-wrenching novel tight in its grasp right until the final word.
Promise is Rachel Eliza Griffiths debut novel and the poetry that she has already won awards for seeps through the fabric of her tale. Exquisitely crafted words and images dance like fireflies illuminating our “path” through what unfolds into a terrifying dynastic drama.
We are in Salt Point, a seaside town in 1950s’ Maine, where the Kindreds and the Junketts are the only black families in a community that barely tolerates them. Our 13-year-old narrator, Cinthy, is bookish like her schoolteacher father, and her elder sister, Ezra, is feisty like the grandmother we meet late in the story. These girls are fun, smart and should have the world at their feet. But they have also been sheltered from the realities of the era and, realising their fragility, we fear for them. We should!
The Civil Rights movement may be taking hold in some parts of the US, but here in Maine lynching, beatings and burnings are just an eye roll away. Our girls are on the cusp of womanhood and their parents’ dream is that they will graduate from school and claim their
