Homegoing (by Yaa Gyasi)

An early contender for best read of the year, for sure.  Homegoing absolutely blew me away.

If you aren't already familiar with it from the crazy hype last year, it starts on the African coast, in modern-day Ghana, with two separated sisters. One is forced to marry a slave owner and stays in Africa. The other is kidnapped and sold to America.  We follow each of their family histories, generation by generation, through the present day -- each chapter is a vignette focusing on a child of the previous protagonist.

The vignettes cover a large swath of the African and African-American experience, from the civil rights movement to slavery, Jim Crow to colonialism, tribal war in Africa and the Harlem of the renaissance.  Loss and separation is a constant theme. Each vignette is strongly character driven, each character is vivid and unique, and I formed an emotional connection with each one.

I can't say enough good things about this.  A must-read.