ACTS OF FORGIVENESS

In a U.S. that’s just elected its first female president, the members of a Black family find themselves divided when a federal reparations act is proposed.

Wilhelmina “Willie” Revel grew up watching her father, Max, who owned a construction company, work tirelessly to provide financial security and upward mobility for his family, having been haunted by his own father’s inability to secure a mortgage because of his race. Willie goes to college to become a journalist, and just as she’s starting to make a name for herself as a reporter for the Village Voice, she’s offered a job with the U.S. Senate campaign of Elizabeth Johnson, one of her former professors. Unfortunately, though, her father gets sick, and Willie needs to go home to take over the business. Eleven years later, now-President Johnson puts forward the Forgiveness Act, which would formally apologize for slavery in part by providing reparations of $175,000 to each descendant of slaves. Willie is now a single mother to a young daughter and is attempting to keep her father’s business afloat. When she decides to undertake the genealogical work required to file for the money, she unintentionally provokes her brother, parents, and grandfather, all of whom have different perspectives on why it’s a bad idea to go poking into the family history, even as the U.S. deals with a violent backlash. Cheeks’ debut novel seeks to explore the question of “whether forgiveness could be political, and, if so, could it last.” The story doesn’t quite address this ambitious question for the nation at large, instead focusing on the many costs that not knowing where one comes from can take on a person, as well as the social and interpersonal effects of racism. Willie is depicted with tremendous care, but there is at times too much narrative distance from the large cast of supporting characters.

A freshly told, complex family drama with an intriguing premise.