WHAT THE FIREFLIES KNEW

A story of Black girlhood from a promising new voice in fiction.

It’s 1995. Kenyatta Bernice—known as KB—is 10 years old and looking forward to turning 11. Then her father dies, her family loses their house, and KB’s mother leaves her and her older sister, Nia, with a grandfather they barely know. The summer that follows is a tumultuous one for KB. She’s still grieving the loss of her father when her mother disappears, and Nia is suddenly more interested in boys than in spending time with her little sister. The White kids across the street are eager to play with KB when their mom isn’t around, but she soon learns that she can’t count on their friendship. A boy KB thinks she can trust hurts her. The only reassuring constant in her life is her well-worn copy of Anne of Green Gables. More than anything, she wants the older people around her to be honest with her, but for the most part, she’s left alone to piece together what’s happening. Her grandfather reveals that he and her mother had a falling out, but KB knows that he’s leaving out important details. She learns that her mother is undergoing some kind of “treatment” from an overheard conversation. The girl figures out all by herself that her father died from a drug overdose. Child narrators can be a challenge, but Harris has crafted a voice for her young protagonist that is both believable and engaging. Early in the narrative, when she first arrives at her grandfather’s home, KB reports, “The house is silent and smells like a mix between the old people that kiss my cheeks at church, and the tiny storage unit where all our stuff lives now.” There’s a lot of information packed into this eloquent sentence as well as a lot of pathos.

Quietly powerful.