Life and Other Love Songs

Description

“Musical in structure—the octaves rise when the music calls for it; truths are revealed by the invisible beats of this gorgeous, rich story” –Ann Napolitano, New York Times bestselling author of Hello Beautiful (Oprah’s Book Club Pick)

“Riveting, rhythmic, transcendent…a stellar family saga.”—Jacqueline Woodson, New York Times bestselling author of Red at the Bone

Named a Most Anticipated Book by Time ∙ Essence ∙ Real Simple ∙ Good Housekeeping ∙ Atlanta-Journal Constitution ∙ The Root ∙ SheReads ∙ Atlanta Magazine ∙ Zibby Mag
 
A father’s sudden disappearance exposes the private fears, dreams, longings, and joys of a Black American family in the late decades of the twentieth century, in this page-turning and intimate new novel from the author of The Care and Feeding of Ravenously Hungry Girls.

It’s a warm, bright October afternoon, and Ozro Armstead walks out into the brilliant sunshine on his thirty-seventh birthday. At home, his wife Deborah and daughter Trinity prepare a surprise celebration; down the street, his brother waves as Oz heads back to his office after having lunch together.
 
But he won’t make it to the party or even to his briefcase back at his desk. He’s about to disappear.
 
In the days, months, and years to follow, Deborah and Trinity look backward and forward as they piece together the life of the man they love, but whom they come to realize they might never have truly known.
 
In a gripping narrative that moves from the Great Migration to 1970s Detroit and 1990s New York, we follow the hopes, triumphs, losses, and secrets that build up and tear apart an American family.“Anissa Gray is a genius…magnificent!”
—Caroline Kepnes

“Life and Other Love Songs is a precisely observed, often beautiful book about family, love, loss and the hidden history that shapes lives…The prose is beautiful and poignant.”
—The New York Times

“This novel wields themes of generational trauma, class and race as pickaxes, excavating a Black family’s history and making room for the future to bloom.”
—Essence

“Riveting, rhythmic, transcendent, Life and Other Love Songs is a stellar family saga. Anissa Gray is a writer to watch.”
—Jacqueline Woodson, New York Times bestselling author of Red at the Bone

“Life and Other Love Songs builds beautifully—we care about these characters while coming to understand that the ground beneath their feet is constructed of secrets. Anissa Gray’s novel feels musical in structure—the octaves rise when the music calls for it; truths are revealed by the invisible beats of this gorgeous, rich story.”
—Ann Napolitano, New York Times bestselling author of Dear Edward and Oprah Book Club Pick Hello Beautiful

“Anissa Gray’s Life and Other Love Songs is one of those rare novels that pulled me out of my life for a few days. The characters are real, vivid, complex – as in life. It’s a story that explores the depths of darkness and fear, yet offers a window into hope.”
—Mary Beth Keane, New York Times bestselling author of Ask Again, Yes

“Cleverly structured and emotionally precise, Love and Other Love Songs is a powerhouse ballad about a family whose histories—shared and individual—will pierce straight to the heart. With empathy and insight, Anissa Gray writes an expertly crafted family drama perfect for fans of Celeste Ng.”
—Tara Conklin, New York Times bestselling author The Last Romantics

“Life and Other Love Songs is a harsh, sometimes haunting, astonishingly moving, exceptionally complex novel about family and music and hurt  and fear and pride and love and loss. Anissa Gray tells this story with such grace, insight and precision that readers will think of these characters long after they close the book. This is what writing should be.”
—LaToya Watkins, author of Perish

“Gray does not disappoint.”
—Publishers Weekly

“The trajectory of Gray’s flawed but relatable characters offers hope that even deep, long-festering wounds can heal.”
—Kirkus Reviews

“Gray shows the complex natures of these broken characters and how abuse, deceit, and life’s struggles are all made worse by racism, poverty, and homophobia.  A great pick for book clubs and an essential purchase.”
—Library Journal

“Humming with heart and just enough suspense to keep the pages turning, this is arresting.”
—Booklist

“A powerful narrative that explores the realities of race, class, and generational history in the twentieth century.”
—The RootAnissa Gray is the author of the novel The Care and Feeding of Ravenously Hungry Girls. She is also an award-winning journalist whose work has been featured in The Washington Post, CNN, and The Cut. She lives in Atlanta, Georgia, with her wife.Trinity

Spring 1989

It wasn’t like any funeral or burial or postburial I’d ever imagined. Not that I’d ever really imagined those things. But as I watched the cars line up along the curb, freshly arrived from the cemetery, all I could think about was the incredible strangeness of the funeral, burial and now, postburial we were all enduring. Everyone was piling out of their cars. They formed a kind of procession that moved over neatly mowed grass to the sidewalk. They made their way up the sloped driveway to the stone walkway and approached the tan brick house and the unlocked screen door that belonged to what was left of my family.

I hung back, leaving the hosting duties to my mother, a more than capable committee of one. She was standing next to the white maple coffee table where she’d stacked coasters and yellow, square cocktail napkins. She’d cooked, too, because the days of people bringing over casseroles and platters of food to fortify our bereaved family had ended years ago. Mrs. Neilson, though, from next door had come by with a vanilla pound cake earlier. The same pale, bland, aggressively bumpy cake she’d brought us when we moved to Bloomfield Hills fifteen years ago. And then again, years later, after my dad vanished.

My grandmother made a spot for the cake on the dining table where we’d set up a crowded buffet of roasted chicken, sliced and splayed artfully on two big platters with sprigs of parsley. There were also boiled potatoes, green beans and assorted sweets. I hefted the cake up next to a platter of brownies and chocolate chip cookies that my mother had bought at the A&P. She was a master of most of the homemaking arts. She crocheted scarves and sewed complete outfits with personalized labels embroidered with Created by Deborah Armstead. She could pack a good lunch and cook an even better dinner, but she’d never been much of a baker.

“Cut her some slack,” my father used to say in a kind of backhanded defense of her various sagging cakes and soggy pies. “When I met her, she was just as likely to burn water as not.”

My mother was standing perfect-posture tall in the living room, a pale-yellow room made brighter by the scent of hyacinths carried in on the breeze. She was smoothing her navy blue skirt and matching jacket, smiling as the first of the visitors came through the door. Her long, blue-black hair that people had admired for as long as I could remember was pulled into a neat bun. She was graying at her temples.

I’d noticed the graying earlier that morning as I sat on the bathroom counter, watching her get ready and listening to her lay out the plans for the day. Only partly listening, actually. I’d mostly been enjoying the steam facial from the mug of coffee I had cradled in my hands, until she asked: “You think they’ll come? You know, with how long it’s been?”

“Yes.” I wanted to add: They’ll come precisely because it’s been so long. And because this is strange. But I didn’t say that. I didn’t want to risk an argument.

“It’s time to try and go on.”

“You definitely seem ready to do that,” I murmured into my coffee mug, at risk of starting that argument I thought I wanted to avoid.

We regarded each other’s reflections in the bathroom mirror. Her honey-colored skin was clear and smooth and not made up yet. She looked younger than her forty-five years. I, on the other hand, looked like an aging hooker who’d had a particularly bad night. My puffy-eyed face was a giant smear of blush and mascara from the day before because I’d been too wiped out to wash after my ten-hour drive home. My mother in the mirror was working her jaw, like she was biting back a particularly bitter critique.

“What do you think I should be doing, Trinity?” she asked finally.

“Not burying an empty casket. For starters.”

“Goddamn it-” She stopped for a moment, closing her eyes and gripping the counter, like she might collapse. “He’s gone.”

“I know that.”

“Do you?”

Did I?

He wasn’t just gone. He was presumed dead. It suddenly felt claustrophobic in that bathroom.

My mother let out a heavy breath, and when I looked at her reflection again, she was every year of her age. And more. There were the crow’s feet feathering out from the corners of her eyes. The deep furrow between her eyebrows, as if she’d endured a lifetime of worry. I noticed my mother’s hand trembling as she slid a bobby pin in her hair to fix the bun at the back of her head. I wondered if she was drinking again.

Careful with her . . . It wasn’t so much that my mother was delicate. It was more that she was already broken and shoddily held together in places.

When she made for the bathroom door, brushing past my shoulder, she’d said, “Please fix your face. And put on something decent. Let’s agree on at least that much for today. Okay?”

Peeking around the doorway to the crowded living room now, I adjusted a rogue shoulder pad under my decent burgundy blouse and secured it under a bra strap as I tried to work up the-well, I didn’t quite know what to call it. Nerve? Gumption? Moxie? Whatever it would take for me to go out there and be a normal human. I took a deep breath and dove into the front room, landing in the arms of neighbors and my father’s former colleagues, many of whom I knew only vaguely.

I turned when I felt a tap on the shoulder and heard my name: “Trinity!”

Mr. Adler, my father’s cheek-pinching, quarter-behind-the-ear-discovering boss, was there with his wife. He was my mother’s boss now. In the days after my father’s disappearance, the Adlers were the main deliverers of casseroles, cakes and a few dishes my mother and I couldn’t identify-even after copious amounts of poking and debate. The Adlers were also the bearers of reassurances: “The police are on it. They’ll find him.”

“So, a journalist?” Mr. Adler was saying. “We got ourselves another Barbara Walters here?”

I smiled awkwardly. “Working on it, I guess.”

“A reporter.” Mrs. Adler nodded approvingly. “That’s what your mom tells us.”

My eyes darted over to my mother, who was standing in a clutch of neighbors-quite possibly, at that very moment, embellishing my resume to them, too. “Well,” I said, “I’m actually more of a . . . radio newsreader.”

“Don’t sell yourself short, young lady.”

“Your dad never would have,” Mr. Adler said. “He was a real go-getter.”

“And so funny,” Mrs. Adler added. “Just a hoot, when he wanted to be. He-“

Mr. Adler cut in with a return to go-getting, recalling the many Saturdays and late nights my dad could be found “burning the midnight oil” at work. I recalled that time, too, but not nearly as fondly.

“We still miss him,” Mr. Adler said. “He was one of our rising stars.”

Mrs. Adler nodded, looking grim. “I can’t believe that just, poof . . .” She threw her hands up and simulated emptiness in the air.

Mr. Adler shot her a look that said, You’ll upset the girl!

And boy was he right. Mrs. Adler’s words and hand gesture had conjured up a terrible image. Poof. A puff of smoke. The wave of a magician’s wand. My father in one moment there on a sidewalk waving goodbye after a birthday lunch. Then, poof, nowhere. I felt tears rise.

Mrs. Adler squeezed my arm. “Oh! I didn’t mean-“

“No, no. It’s okay. Seriously.” I wiped at my eyes, embarrassed. I hadn’t cried, not even once today. Not once since the day he disappeared. I’d spent that time in a state of disbelief, waiting for the next wave of the magician’s wand and my father’s reappearance, maybe in the front yard cutting the grass or out back tending the garden. Or even popping up on the cracked, black-gum-dotted sidewalk where he was last seen. Like an amnesia patient who couldn’t say where he’d been or who he was but had somehow known to return to that spot.

Mrs. Adler was rubbing my arm, still apologizing. “I’m fine,” I said, gently removing her hand. “It’s okay.”

There was an awkward transition to a conversation about Mr. Adler’s upcoming retirement. But I was recalling the police officers coming to the house, standing near where I now stood with the Adlers. I was remembering my mother’s distressing trip to the morgue. I saw again my father’s dark blue suit jacket and black leather briefcase. Two of the things he’d left behind at the office, as if he’d be back for them in no time.

I suddenly felt like I was breathing through a pinhole. Trapped in a tight space. I came back to Mr. and Mrs. Adler talking about the multitiered crystal chandelier they’d ordered for the foyer of their retirement home in Naples. Just as Mrs. Adler was moving on to the master bedroom, I excused myself. I wanted to leave the house altogether, but go where? I stepped gingerly through a thicket of people, careful of toes. I went through the dining room, passing the buffet table. The chicken was about halfway gone, with vultures circling. I went on to the kitchen for a glass of water and stood at the sink, feeling marginally better with each swallow.

I returned to the fringes of the room. Standing on the outside of things, I could see that the mood was much lighter than it had been before. The breezy conversations sometimes whipped up into great gusts of laughter. A few of the mourners were making their way around the room, balancing plates and wineglasses, spilling off into the dining room and the kitchen.

And then it hit me: This is a party. My mother had thrown a party.

I searched for her in the crowded living room. She was nowhere to be found.

Whatever there was of grief in that room, it collected itself and followed me out the front door and onto the porch. The warmth of the day had dipped with the sun, but it was still a nice night. I hugged myself against the chill and looked up at the sky and a crescent moon. IÕd long ago put heaven in the same category as SantaÕs North Pole, but I sometimes found myself wondering whether my father was up there. I wondered about him all the time because absence was not the same as death. It was worse, given all of the not knowing. A person canÕt just disappear from a Detroit sidewalk-poof-into thin air. Dead or alive, the missing are somewhere here on earth. But how do you find them?

I jumped, startled by the sound of the door opening and closing behind me. It was just my grandmother. My father’s mother.

“Didn’t mean to scare you.” She swirled the ice in her glass. A vodka tonic. “You doing okay out here, little girl?”

“Oh, you know . . .” I slid my arm around her waist and rested my head on her shoulder. “Do you think Dad would have liked this? All of it . . . It feels like a bad play, you know?” Complete with a chorus of mourners costumed in black. A generic monologue-cum-eulogy from a clergyman who, because he didn’t know my father, described him vaguely as a “loving husband,” a “dearly beloved father” and a “faithful friend,” which, to me, anyone would have said about a husband/father/friend who was marginally better than terrible. He didn’t even get his name right. He kept calling him Daniel. It was Daniel Ozro Armstead Junior. But everyone who knew my father called him Oz.

My grandmother shrugged and shook her head. “I cain’t tell you what your daddy would or wouldn’t’ve liked. You know how it was with us.”

The strains of an old song drifted out the door behind us: You won’t regret it, no, no, young girls they don’t forget it . . .

“I don’t understand. Mom wouldn’t even consider declaring him dead, then suddenly, it was all she wanted to do. And now we have this. A party. With music. I don’t get it.”

My grandmother cradled her glass to her chest, her eyes shining. “We all trying to live through our moments, Trinity. That might mean crying a bucket of tears . . . or playing some good old Otis Redding.” She waved her drink toward the house. “Got to live through it, little girl. Heartbreaks today, joys from yesterday . . . and God knows what all tomorrow.”

Before

He imagined it must be love.

Deborah

1962-1963

I was getting ready for another one of our rent parties. Despite the fact that me and my roommates, all four of us, worked, we were barely getting by. We lived as close as sailors in a submarine in our little one-bedroom above a beauty shop on Twelfth Street. Out the windows of our apartment, down on the street, red and green lights were blinking and giving our place a festive glow, never mind the cracked plaster and worn-out radiator.

I was crawling around on my hands and knees, running a line of beige tape along the checkerboard floor to mark off where we were going to put a stage for the party. I stood up and rubbed the soreness out of my knees, then put the roll of tape around my wrist like a bracelet. I stepped back to get a good look at things.

“What do you think?” I asked my roommate Mary, who was at my shoulder breathing hot judgment.

“I don’t know, Deborah. I-“

“The band can squeeze in in the corner right behind us,” I said, waving the roll of tape toward the tight space where our singing group and the band would soon be. “It’s just a three-piece. And us girls, we can be kind of close in together up in front of them, don’t you think?”

“We’re gonna have to get awful close . . .”

“Look, we needed a stage, so I made one. If you can do better, be my guest.” I tossed the roll of tape on the coffee table. “I’m going to change.” I stalked off toward the bedroom me and Mary shared with our two other roommates, who, right then, were trying to make more dancing space by pushing our Christmas tree into a corner. The lights were still on it and the ornaments were dangling and swinging, so it was a delicate business.

In the bedroom, where Mary had followed me, we stood in the narrow space between the two sets of bunk beds and shimmied into matching black cocktail dresses. The third dress for our third member was spread out on one of the bottom bunks, waiting for its wearer. The dresses were on the fancy side for a rent party, but we always wanted to do things at the highest level. Mary zipped me up and I turned around to return the favor. I’d made the dresses myself, so I was surprised to find a thread sprouting up from the seam on her shoulder. I was usually more careful than that with my creations. I didn’t want to go pulling on the thing and making a bigger problem for myself, and I didn’t have scissors handy, so I smoothed the thread down.US

Additional information

Dimensions	0.7400 × 5.2400 × 7.9800 in
Imprint	Berkley
ISBN-13	09781984802477
ISBN-10	198480247X
Author	Anissa Gray
Audience	General / adult
BISAC	FIC044000, FIC049000
Subjects	mother's day gifts, gifts for women, mothers day gifts, books for women, black authors best sellers, black authors, african american novels, african american fiction, african american literature, women's fiction, gifts for her, fiction books, books fiction, women gifts, african american books, realistic fiction books, mom gifts, new york times best sellers, book club books, women, african american, family, mothers, romance, motherhood, fiction, Cooking, parenting, gifts for mom, mother's day, FIC044000, novels, mothers day, books for mom, FIC049000
Format	General Trade