UNTETHERED

A Black woman grapples with her personal and professional choices in 1960s Alabama.

Katia Daniels hasn’t followed the typical path for a Black woman in Troy, Alabama, in 1967. At 40, she’s devoted to her job as director of the Pike County Group Home for Negro Boys, where she oversees the care of neglected and abused children with a firm hand and warm heart. She’s a caretaker at home, too—since her father’s death, she’s been the support of her nurturing mother and younger twin brothers. But the closest Katia gets to having a love life is reading romance novels in a bubble bath. She’s long been self-conscious about her weight, and a recent emergency hysterectomy has left her feeling that no man will want her if she can’t bear children. She has a boring platonic relationship with an older man, Leon, but he’s more interested in watching TV with her mother. Then her routine gets blown up. Her brothers, Marcus and Aaron, both serving as Marines in Vietnam, are reported missing in action. At the boys’ home, Katia’s two newest charges bond with each other and with her: a sweet-natured 9-year-old called Pee Wee and Chad, who looks like a grown man but, at 14, is still a kid, and a badly damaged one. Then her high school crush, Seth Taylor, turns up on her doorstep, as handsome and charming as ever, despite having lost a leg in Vietnam—and much more interested in her than she ever dreamed possible. The novel winds its romance plot around the challenges Katia faces in helping the boys in her care and keeping them safe, as well as dealing with family issues as one brother returns deeply traumatized while the other remains missing. But as dramatic as those elements might seem, the novel rarely works up much suspense or intensity—almost every character is so well-intentioned, supportive, and loving that any moment of tension deflates as soon as it begins. The historical setting is gestured to but not evoked in detail, and the methods and atmosphere of the group home seem improbably contemporary for half a century ago.

Warmly drawn but overly idealized characters populate a predictable plot.