Halsey Street

Written by Naima Coster

Narrated by Bahni Turpin

Finalist for the Kirkus Prize for Fiction.

A modern-day story of family, loss, and renewal, Halsey Street captures the deeply human need to belong—not only to a place but to one another.

Penelope Grand has scrapped her failed career as an artist in Pittsburgh and moved back to Brooklyn to keep an eye on her ailing father. She’s accepted that her future won’t be what she’d dreamed, but now, as gentrification has completely reshaped her old neighborhood, even her past is unrecognizable. Old haunts have been razed, and wealthy white strangers have replaced every familiar face in Bed-Stuy. Even her mother, Mirella, has abandoned the family to reclaim her roots in the Dominican Republic. That took courage. It’s also unforgivable.

When Penelope moves into the attic apartment of the affluent Harpers, she thinks she’s found a semblance of family—and maybe even love. But her world is upended again when she receives a postcard from Mirella asking for reconciliation. As old wounds are reopened, and secrets revealed, a journey across an ocean of sacrifice and self-discovery begins.

An engrossing debut, Halsey Street shifts between the perspectives of these two captivating, troubled women. Mirella has one last chance to win back the heart of the daughter she’d lost long before leaving New York, and for Penelope, it’s time to break free of the hold of the past and start navigating her own life.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Brilliance Audio
• Release date: Jan 1, 2018
• ISBN: 9781536669091

Naima Coster

Naima Coster is a native of Fort Greene, Brooklyn. She holds an MFA in fiction from Columbia University, an MA in English and creative writing from Fordham University, and a BA in English and African American studies from Yale. Her stories and essays have appeared in the New York Times, Guernica, Arts & Letters, Kweli, and the Rumpus. Coster is the recipient of numerous awards and a Pushcart Prize nomination. A former editor of CURA and a former mentor of Girls Write Now, Coster is also a proud alumna of Prep for Prep, the leadership development program in New York City aiding high-potential minority students in public, charter, and parochial schools. She currently teaches writing in North Carolina, where she lives with her family. Halsey Street is her first novel.

Reviews for Halsey Street

[davischristopherjohn · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

A quiet story, but moving and melancholy. Loved the descriptions of gentrifying Brooklyn, and the message about making amends before it's too late.

[Marta Em · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

This book was just non-eventful. All of the characters were egoistic and I didn’t really like anyone.

[Tee · Rating: 1 out of 5 stars]

Long read. The storytelling wasn’t great and the story was so drawn out.

[SELAH SASSONE · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

I loved how raw and unapologetic she was to speak about her emotions about dealing with her detachments from family, people, lovers, and her art but being able to find it all again through loss and recovery. It was an emotional read but necessary.

[Iasia McCord · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Excellent story I would totally recommend this book to anyone

[Bethany Young · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

This story is tragic and beautifully written. I hadn’t heard of the book and didn’t know what to expect. So glad I chose it. Highly recommend.

[Ashanta · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

The writing was descriptive and beautiful. The characters were so real and therefore so flawed. The social commentary through the different characters and populations' experiences of gentrification was deep. Part of my constant enjoyment was the challenge of being present for the humanity of all the characters. When I have had some time to let it all sink in, I want to revisit Halsey Street and find what else I mind discover.

[brenzi_3 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Penelope Grand, an unfulfilled artist, is living in Pittsburgh when she is forced to return NYC where her father has had an accident. Her mother, with whom she has a non-existent relationship, has left and moved back to her native Dominican Republic, leaving Penelope's father on his own. This is a book about mothers and daughters and their often contentious relationships. It's also about finding your place in the world and gentrification of NYC neighborhoods and its effect on the old timers who've lived their lives and now don't know if they still have a home. Very well written and I look forward to Coster's new book due out this year.

[arlenadean · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Title: Halsey StreetAuthor: Naima CosterPublisher: Little A Reviewed By: Arlena DeanRating: FourReview:"Halsey Street" by Naima CosterMy Thoughts....What a read "Halsey Street" [Bed-Stuy] was being well written thought-provoking read that involved what happens when Penelope Grand who carried deep pain from childhood to adulthood. This was quite a emotional complexed journey for Penelope being raised in a dysfunctional family as she suffered from 'abandonment, unworthiness, love/hate detachment, anger and recklessness' while her parents were having real life issues of their own. I found this read filled with sadness for this entire family that I found it so very hard to read at times. This author gives the reader some well developed characters that were not likable at times lacking in communication and understanding. My favorite characters were the grandmother, Brooklyn boyfriend and the heartsick neighbor. My main concern in this read was just finding out why was Penelope so mad most of the time and had such animosity toward her Mom.I found this story about the relationship between this daughter [Penelope] and mother [Mirella], the neighborhood and her father [Ralph] were quite a intriguing sad read that was quite raw, gritty, painful and yet in the end being a story that seemed to end with love and hope. I did felt that this story ended quite abruptly leaving me with some questions that I wished had been answered.

[beamis12 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

3.5 The oftentimes complicated relationship between mother and daughter is fully explored in this wonderful Noel, that takes us from Brooklyn, New York to the Dominican Republic. This is not a quick read, the pace is rather slow in fact, but it covers the gentrification of a neighborhood, the disintegration of a marriage, and of a daughter who may wait too long to reconcile with her mother. What made this a special read for me is that I could picture all this happening, it is so vividly written, seemed so realistic.Mirella, the mother, and Penelope, the daughter are complex characters, sometimes likable, many times not. Their misunderstandings, years in the making are not easily resolved, especially as Penny seems only to understand and relate to her father. They narrate their stories in alternate chapters, and I have to admit loving those set in the Dominican Republic, the colors, the flavors of the Caribbean, so lush. We find out what happened between Mirella and Ralph, how they came to live in different countries. There is an iconic record story whose closing will start the downward spiral of marriage and neighborhood. We see how gentrification changes things, makes them unrecognizable, neighborhood and people.Most of all this is a realistic portray of the dynamics, flaws and all, of family relationships. Was a slower read but a good one.ARC from Netgalley.

[froxgirl · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

This should receive accolades as one of the 10 Best Novels of 2017, or any, year. The story is movingly told from the points of view of Penelope, who's half black and half Dominican, and her mother Mirella, whose loss of her wealthy father at an early age stunts her emotional growth. Also at the center is Ralph Grand, the father, owner of a celebrated Bed-Stuy roots record store forced out by the tsunami of Brooklyn gentrification.Penelope had never recovered from her freshman year at RISD, where her art was ridiculed as "illustrations", and she's drifted ever since. Mirella, after twenty years cleaning homes for wealthy white families, left Ralph after he lost his store and his mojo and returned to the DR, and has completely cut off contact with him, ignoring his physical deterioration from accidents and his subsequent alcoholism. Penelope reluctantly returns to the neighborhood to help with Ralph's care and is astonished at the changes wrought by the brownstone-by-brownstone elimination of people of color. Penelope's actions, her decisions, her seeming paralysis and inability to move on, are so perfectly described that the reader will not want to let go. I rarely wish for a sequel when a novel is as complete in itself as this one, but a return to Halsey Street and Penelope feels like a necessity to me. Highly recommended!Quotes: " The neighborhood had never been anything more to Penelope than where she was from.""Her body was the kind that you shape for yourself, not the kind that is the sum of all your accidents, labor, appetite, and genes."