Perish A Novel

<b><b><b><b><b>“</b></b></b>Watkins’s prose is effortless and forthright. . . . This is an impressive feat of storytelling. . . . It’s a difficult read and a tender story of silences and secrets. It’s a novel about coming home, despite that home being broken. And it’s a brave triumph of a novel that readers won’t forget long after finishing it.<b><b><b>”</b></b></b><br><b><i>—The New York Times Book Review<br><br></i></b>Named a Most Anticipated Book of the Year by <i>Good Morning America * Essence* Esquire * The Root * Bustle * Ebony * PopSugar * Ms. * The Millions</i></b><br><br>From a stunning new voice comes a powerful debut novel, <i>Perish</i>, about a Black Texan family, exploring the effects of inherited trauma and intergenerational violence as the family comes together to say goodbye to their matriarch on her deathbed.</b><br><br><i>Bear it or perish yourself</i>. Those are the words Helen Jean hears that fateteful night in her cousin’s outhouse that change the trajectory of her life.<br><br>Spanning decades, <i>Perish</i> tracks the choices Helen Jean—the matriarch of the Turner family—makes and the way those choices have rippled across generations, from her children to her grandchildren and beyond.<br><br>Told in alternating chapters, <i>Perish</i> follows four members of the Turner family: Julie B., a woman who regrets her wasted youth and the time spent under Helen Jean’s thumb; Alex, a police officer grappling with a dark and twisted past; Jan, a mother of two who yearns to go to school and leave Jerusalem, Texas, and all of its trauma behind for good; and Lydia, a woman whose marriage is falling apart because her body can’t seem to stay pregnant, as they're called home to say goodbye to their mother and grandmother.<br><br>This family’s “reunion” unearths long-kept secrets and forces each member to ask themselves  important questions about who is deserving of forgiveness and who bears the cross of blame. <br><br>Set in vividly drawn Texas and tackling themes like trauma, legacy, faith, home, class, race, and more, this beautiful yet heart-wrenching novel will appeal to anyone who is interested in the intricacies of family and the ways bonds can be made, maintained, or irrevocably broken.