Myron built Hazel a house, brick by brick, in the historic Black suburb of Douglas outside of Memphis. Hazel North married Myron in the 1940s, just before he enlisted to fight in the war. The characters in this novel experience some brutal tragedies, and yet the tone is overall quite hopeful. For a story of such breadth it’s really quite short, which felt refreshing. Unfolding over seventy years through a chorus of unforgettable voices that move back and forth in time, Memphis paints an indelible portrait of inheritance, celebrating the full complexity of what we pass down, in a family and as a country: brutality and justice, faith and forgiveness, sacrifice and love.This is an example of a multigenerational story, with many different timelines, done well. Joan begins to understand that her mother, her mother’s mother, and the mothers before them persevered, made impossible choices, and put their dreams on hold so that her life would not have to be defined by loss and anger-that the sole instrument she needs for healing is her paintbrush. One of her subjects is their enigmatic neighbor Miss Dawn, who claims to know something about curses, and whose stories about the past help Joan see how her passion, imagination, and relentless hope are, in fact, the continuation of a long matrilineal tradition. Joan tries to settle into her new life, but family secrets cast a longer shadow than any of them expected.Īs she grows up, Joan finds relief in her artwork, painting portraits of the community in Memphis.
Half a century earlier, Joan’s grandfather built this majestic house in the historic Black neighborhood of Douglass-only to be lynched days after becoming the first Black detective in the city. This is not the first time violence has altered the course of the family’s trajectory. Summer 1995: Ten-year-old Joan, her mother, and her younger sister flee her father’s explosive temper and seek refuge at her mother’s ancestral home in Memphis.
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