Ailey Garfield

Ailey Garfield is the novel’s primary protagonist. She is the youngest of three sisters, the daughters of Maybelle and Geoffrey. The story is in part the bildungsroman of Ailey’s life, narrated through her first-person perception. As such, the reader witnesses Ailey grow from a young girl into a woman in her thirties between the 1980s and 2000s. Through her adolescence and young-adulthood, Ailey grapples with the trauma from the perpetual molestation her paternal grandfather, Gandee, inflicted upon her as a young girl. She takes grim solace in the knowledge that both her sisters were molested as well and can empathize with each other.

Like her parents, Ailey attends Routledge College in Georgia. Ailey eventually attends graduate school in North Carolina to study history, under the tutelage of Dr. Oludara. For her dissertation, Ailey studies the history of her ancestors on the Pinchard Plantation. Her experience...