LGBTQ+ annotation: The summer we got free

The summer we got free

By Mia McKenzie

Genre: African American fiction; LGBTQ+ fiction
Publication date: 2012
Number of pages: 242 pages

Literary Awards: Lambda Literary Award for LGBT Debut Fiction (2013)

Synopsis:

The reader meets Ava Delaney as a thirty year-old married woman, living together with her husband, her parents, and her sister in her parents’ house in Philadelphia. She works at a museum cafeteria during the day, and she’s largely indifferent to her surroundings. One morning, unknown woman shows up unexpectedly at the Delaney house, and her presence mysteriously stirs up a long dormant fire in Ava. Told in chapters alternating between Ava’s childhood in the 1950s and the year of 1976, when their visitor appears, the story unfolds to reveal the Delaney family’s path from once beloved among their neighbors and church community to dramatically ostracized and isolated after a violent and tragic event.


Appeal:

Storyline - character-driven
Characters - complex, well-developed
Writing style - descriptive, lush
Tone - haunting, stirring, amusing, sensuous
Pace - leisurely


Read-alikes:

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I’ve Got a Time Bomb (2014)
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I’ve Got A Time Bomb chronicles her surrealistic journey living among the loners, losers, and leave-behinds in the dark corners of Amerika.” (Goodreads)

Yabo (2014)
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