The Revisioners by Margaret Wilkerson Sexton
Margaret Wilkerson Sexton keeps getting better and better. On the heels of her National Book Award-nominated A Kind of Freedom, she gifts us The Revisioners (Counterpoint, $25)—a stunner. This time-bending, intergenerational story of strength, love, and legacy, alternates between 2017, 1924, and 1855, telling the story—or stories—of two Louisiana women, Ava and her grandmother’s great-grandmother, Josephine. Ava, a single mother, moves into her white grandmother’s home in order to care for the aging woman. Tensions arise as her grandmother’s health and mind deteriorate. Ava’s story is mirrored by the 1924 narrative of Josephine’s uneasy friendship with a new white neighbor in a nearby property. Josephine, born a slave, escaped and eventually built a family farm with her husband. Sexton connects these two women through motherhood, their unique—some even say magical—ability to nurture life, and uncountable obstacles of racism and violence. An unputdownable read, The Revisioners will leave you gasping in the end.