I Never Dreamed You'd Leave In Summer
is an epistolary novel telling the story of a young Black student navigating campus politics, community tensions, and his own guilt over his past life as a drug runner. He finds space for atonement working at a beauty salon, but as scandal erupts fate takes a haunting, complex turn that encompasses radical politics, sexism, and racism. Contrasting campus satire with an ode to the working-class culture of a Black beauty shop,
presents a complex parable on the question of grace, who needs it, who is scared of it, who runs from it, and who struggles to accept it. Drawing from
Native Son
,
The Stranger
, and
The Sorrows Of Young Werther
is a protest novel that breaks every rule of protest novels and is a ferocious, irreverent, yet compassionate read.