A Read with Jenna Today Show Book Club Pick!
An instant New York Times bestseller!
"A once-every-few-years reading experience."—Mary Beth Keane, New York Times bestselling author of Ask Again, Yes
"Coster
portrays her characters’ worlds with startling vitality. As the
children fall in lust and love, grapple with angst and battle the tides
of New South politics, Coster’s writing shines"—New York Times Book Review
From
the author of Halsey Street, a sweeping novel of legacy, identity, the
American family—and the ways that race affects even our most intimate
relationships.
A community in the Piedmont of North Carolina
rises in outrage as a county initiative draws students from the largely
Black east side of town into predominantly white high schools on the
west. For two students, Gee and Noelle, the integration sets off a chain
of events that will tie their two families together in unexpected ways
over the next twenty years.
On one side of the integration debate
is Jade, Gee's steely, ambitious mother. In the aftermath of a
harrowing loss, she is determined to give her son the tools he'll need
to survive in America as a sensitive, anxious, young Black man. On the
other side is Noelle's headstrong mother, Lacey May, a white woman who
refuses to see her half-Latina daughters as anything but white. She
strives to protect them as she couldn't protect herself from the
influence of their charming but unreliable father, Robbie.
When
Gee and Noelle join the school play meant to bridge the divide between
new and old students, their paths collide, and their two seemingly
disconnected families begin to form deeply knotted, messy ties that will
shape the trajectory of their adult lives. And their mothers—each
determined to see her child inherit a better life—will make choices that
will haunt them for decades to come.
As love is built and lost, and the past never too far behind, What's Mine and Yours is
an expansive, vibrant tapestry that moves between the years, from the
foothills of North Carolina, to Atlanta, Los Angeles, and Paris. It
explores the unique organism that is every family: what breaks them
apart and how they come back together.
