A new novel from Tayari Jones sparkling with wit, intelligence, and deep feeling, Kin follows two lifelong friends whose worlds converge after many years apart in the face of a devastating tragedy.

Vernice and Annie, two motherless daughters raised in Honeysuckle, Louisiana, have been best friends and neighbors since earliest childhood, but are fated to live starkly different lives. Raised by her aunt in the wake of her mother’s death, Vernice leaves home at 18 for Spelman College, where she joins a sisterhood of powerfully connected Black women and marries into an affluent family. Annie, abandoned by her dissolute mother as a child, and fixated on the idea of finding her, sets off on a journey that will culminate in a battle for her life.

Jones is the author of four novels, most recently An American Marriage, which won the Women’s Prize for Fiction and an NAACP Image Award. The novel was also an Oprah’s Book Club Selection and appeared on Barack Obama’s summer reading list and year-end roundup.