From The New York Times-bestselling author of The Mothers,
a stunning new novel about twin sisters, inseparable as children, who
ultimately choose to live in two very different worlds, one black and
one white.
The Vignes twin
sisters will always be identical. But after growing up together in a
small, southern black community and running away at age sixteen, it’s
not just the shape of their daily lives that is different as adults,
it’s everything: their families, their communities, their racial
identities. Many years later, one sister lives with her black
daughter in the same southern town she once tried to escape. The
other secretly passes for white, and her white husband knows nothing
of her past. Still, even separated by so many miles and just as many
lies, the fates of the twins remain intertwined. What will happen to
the next generation, when their own daughters’ storylines
intersect?
Weaving together
multiple strands and generations of this family, from the Deep South
to California, from the 1950s to the 1990s, Brit Bennett produces a
story that is at once a riveting, emotional family story and a
brilliant exploration of the American history of passing. Looking
well beyond issues of race, The Vanishing Half considers the
lasting influence of the past as it shapes a person’s decisions,
desires, and expectations, and explores some of the multiple reasons
and realms in which people sometimes feel pulled to live as something
other than their origins.
As with her New York
Times-bestselling debut The Mothers, Brit Bennett offers an
engrossing page-turner about family and relationships that is
immersive and provocative, compassionate and wise.