Oh wow – this book was amazing. Amazing. It would be a really good pick for a book club as there is so much to discuss: family, relationships, race, sexuality… I could go on. I read it in a little over 24 hours. This is the story of two identical twin sisters, growing up in the small Black community of Mallard, Louisiana. Desiree is the troublemaker and restless, whereas her sister Stella is more bookish and a bit of a goody two-shoes. When the sisters are sixteen, they decide to flee Mallard for New Orleans, running away forever. Once in New Orleans, the girls find ways to piece together a living: Desiree working at a laundromat and Stella pretending to be white and getting a job as a typist. But after a couple years, Stella abandons Desiree, leaving only a note behind, saying that she has to “go her own way.” From their, the sisters lives take very different paths. Stella passes for white and goes on to marry her boss and become a wealthy housewife (with her husband having no idea of her background). Meanwhile, Desiree marries the darkest man she can find, who eventually abuses her, causing her to leave and go back to Mallard. The story follows the two women and their daughters (Jude and Kennedy, whose lives intersect at one point!) through the fifties in the Jim Crow South to the nineties in Los Angeles. I could not put it down. I cannot recommend this book enough!