In Philadelphia, 1948, 15-year-old Ruby is consumed with studying hard in hopes of winning a prestigious scholarship and becoming the first person in her family to attend college. When she meets Shimmy, a Jewish boy who is the son of her aunt's landlord, they begin a forbidden interracial relationship that threatens her dream. Meanwhile Eleanor is a university sophomore in Washington, D.C. when she meets William Pride, a respectable graduate student who comes from a world of wealth. As their relationship grows, their differences in class become more prominent, especially as William's mother voices her strong opposition to their liaison and attempts to control their relationship for the sake of propriety. As the two Black women navigate romance and ambition, these racial and familial differences threaten to derail their happiness. Author of Yellow Wife (2021) and winner of the USA Best Book Award for Love in a Carry-on Bag (2012), Johnson showcases the difficult boundaries of race, class, and education as she explores the obstacles and consequences that confront those who seek to cross them.

Two ambitious young Black women struggle with the consequences of unplanned pregnancies in post--World War II America. Ruby Pearsall, one of the two main characters of this historical novel, wants to become a doctor. She's only 14, but she's already set herself on the path to her dream as a student in a demanding special program that she hopes will earn her a college scholarship. Her mother is indifferent, her father absent, but Ruby has her own determination and the warm support of her Aunt Marie, a nightclub performer who takes the girl in when her mother kicks her out. Distraction strikes, though, in the person of Shimmy, the son of Aunt Marie's Jewish landlord, who falls madly in love with Ruby despite her efforts to remind him of the perils of interracial romance in Philadelphia in 1949. Eleanor Quarles, the book's other main character, is a few years older than Ruby. She's already in college, at Howard University in Washington, and happily starting to pursue a career as an archivist in the school's library. It's there that she meets William Pride Jr., a handsome, charming medical student whose attention to her seems almost like a dream--until she meets his family. They're part of the city's wealthy, accomplished Black elite, and Eleanor, who's from a blue-collar family in small-town Ohio, feels out of her element. What's more, unlike Eleanor, almost everyone in William's social orbit is light-skinned enough to pass for White. William's ferociously snobbish mother, Rose, does not see Eleanor as a potential bride for her son, but William is in love. Both young women get pregnant. For Eleanor, that leads to marriage but not happiness; for Ruby, it leads to a stint in a nightmarish maternity home for unwed mothers. The events that will create a bond between the two are telegraphed a little too early, and the plot sometimes bogs down. But the engaging main characters and wealth of historical detail carry the novel forward. An empathetic and sobering look at the price women of the 1950s sometimes paid for desire. Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.

Taking on another fascinating under-told piece of women's history in this well-researched new novel, the author of Yellow Wife illuminates the impact of unwed pregnancy through the alternating narratives of two young Black women in the 1950s. Supported by two loving, hardworking parents, Eleanor Quarles is studying at the pinnacle of Black higher education, Howard University, and she plans a career as an archivist. Ruby Pearsall, the daughter of an unwed teenage mother, is struggling to be the first in her family to go to college, via the We Rise program for high school students of color in Philadelphia. Eleanor and Ruby are both forced to make heartrendingly difficult choices, revealing startling truths about adoption, race, and class in the United States in the years before legalized birth control. Sparked by the author's own family history, this timely novel imagines the emotional turmoil of two young Black women of vastly different circumstances in the 1950s, as unwed pregnancy and the stigma surrounding it threaten to derail their carefully made plans for college and careers. VERDICT This is a moving work of women's fiction with timely perspective on racism, colorism, and pre-Roe women's rights in the United States of the 1950s. Fans of Tayari Jones, Brit Bennett, and Jeni McFarland will want to check it out.--Laurie Cavanaugh

Johnson's suspenseful and thought-provoking latest (after The Yellow Wife) follows two young Black women as they separately navigate mid-20th century America. In the fall of 1948, Ruby is a high school junior in Philadelphia who attends Saturday enrichment classes in hopes of winning a college scholarship and becoming an ophthalmologist. Eleanor, from a Cleveland suburb, is a sophomore at Howard University who is surprised by the campus's social hierarchy, which is based on wealth and skin color. The lives of both women change when they find love: Ruby with the sweet, bright son of her Jewish landlord; and Eleanor with a medical student who belongs to an upper-class Black family. Unexpected pregnancies threaten the plans and dreams of both women, and heighten the tensions caused by the gulfs between them and their lovers' families. Johnson methodically develops the women's worlds and draws subtle hints at the similarities in their experiences, and after their pregnancies, they're brought together in a bittersweet denouement. This well-crafted work is bound to provoke discussion among readers about the conflicts women face regarding pregnancy. (Feb.)