Sweet Water

"From the PEN-nominated author of The Blueprint comes a moving novel about two women connected by music and memory-and murder. Lola Jones, incarcerated for the death of her mother's former lover, writes to the dead man's daughter-someone she has lived in the shadow of for most of her life. As Lola reaches across time and grief, the story, told through a single letter written from a Texas prison in 1983, unfolds in two mirrored movements: first, the life of her mother, Camille, a blues singer shaped by love, ambition, and loss; then Lola's own coming of age in the echo of that legacy. Braided with music, memory, and the weight of being misunderstood, Sweet Water explores generational trauma, inheritance, and the ways women learn to survive the stories they are handed. Structured like a blues song-call and response, verse and refrain-the novel asks what it means to reclaim your voice when someone else's pain has defined your life"-- Provided by publisher.