LEAVING

A Pushcart Editor's Prize nominee traces three generations of a hard-luck African-American family striving for happiness and normalcy in Oakland, California.

As his title implies, Dry’s characters—seamstress Ruby Washington, her half-brother Easton, daughter Lida, and Lida’s two sons, Love and Li’l Pit—are in a state of near-constant flux. In the opening scene, Ruby and Easton arrive out west, in 1959, after coming by bus from their native South Carolina. The scene is reprised throughout and is echoed in the restless wanderings of the others: of Easton, a gifted artist drawn into the civil rights movement and a disappointing romance with a white colleague; of Lida, who lapses into drug-addiction and prostitution, devoured inside by the terrible secret of her uncle’s sexual abuse; of Love, whose violent childhood leaves him scarred as he struggles against social workers, “gangstas,” and an uncaring white world; and of Li’l Pit, a feral man-child bound either for prison or early death. Dry, who has a background working with emotionally disturbed children, is compelling in his depiction of this milieu. The family’s moral compass and center is the strong and devout Ruby, who maintains both the household through which the others drift and the living memories of the family’s rural origins. The narrative jumps abruptly back and forth in time—offering much black history along the way—although each chapter begins helpfully with the date and the present ages of the characters. Though he has a convincing feel for period and a seasoned eye for detail, Dry sometimes writes in a manner almost scriptlike as the story progresses through short, vivid scenes and sharp exchanges of dialogue.

The downward spiral of these lives—everything that could go wrong does (even Ruby’s sewing machine is stolen)—becomes a bit dizzying after 400 pages. But Leaving is rescued by the characters themselves, haunting and well-drawn. A strong debut.