About the Book
Tragedy Powell tries to feel she has it all-until her and her husband's perfect life online becomes a whirlwind of spilled secrets about Tragedy's drinking, a missing woman, and their all-white town.
Winner 2023 IBPA Benjamin Franklin Silver Award for Fiction: Mystery & Thriller
Amazon Editors' Pick, December 2022
The Root, "November 2022 Books by Black Authors We Can't Wait to Read"
ESSENCE magazine's, "18 New Books We Can't Wait To Read This Summer"
Bustle's, "The Most Anticipated Books Of September 2022"
From the award-winning author of Speaking of Summer comes a suspenseful, truthful look into the lives of women who drink to survive or just to cope, with a provocative narrator who carries readers along an emotional journey to acceptance.
Tragedy and Victor Powell have moved to the desirable but dark Grayson Glens enclave of dream homes just outside of Chicago. Stressed urbanites, they've got to live large in real life to stay large online. With only a few blacks in their elite gated community, they settle in but never quite feel at home. Then, a missing young black woman floats up in the Grayson River.
Is the spirit of the mysterious scarlet-lettered woman, Raven McCoy, haunting Grayson during the pandemic?
Tragedy, haunted by her own difficult checkered past versus Victor's sterling history, thinks so. The pressure to manage his image for profit drives her to drink, even when his trying teen daughter visits. But Victor's ex-wife, the Grayson gossip and a female detective all close in on Tragedy's unraveling life. Then Tragedy spirals into addiction, past secrets and the local women's fight for justice for a woman.
About the Author :
Kalisha Buckhanon is a writer, speaker and commentator creating stories and media about African-Americans, women, love and justice. Kalisha Buckhanon is author of the novels Upstate, Conception, Solemn and Speaking of Summer: a book pick of Essence, O Magazine, TIME, USA Today, Entertainment Weekly, Cosmo, Buzzfeed, Lit Hub and more. Her short stories have been printed in Fiction, Fiction International, Oxford American, Black Renaissance Noire, Michigan Quarterly Review, pluck! and more. She is also seen on ID, BET and TV-One true crime shows as an expert. Her next novel, the mystery Running to Fall, will publish in 2022 from the historic African American Literature Book Club (AALBC.com).Kalisha's debut novel Upstate introduced her in such media as People, Elle, Marie Claire, The Guardian/London Observer and Essence, as one of their "Three Writers to Watch." Chadwick Boseman co-narrates the audiobook and it won a Literary Fiction Audie Award. Terry McMillan gave Kalisha the only Young Author Award in her name for the novel. It is published in the UK and France, an American Library Association ALEX Award winner, a Hurston/Wright Foundation Debut Fiction Finalist, a New York Public Library's Best Books for Teens and an inaugural "Literature for Justice" title for National Book Foundation. Kalisha's other honors include a Friends of American Writers Award for Conception, a Pushcart Prize nomination, an Illinois Arts Council Fellowship and Phi Beta Kappa induction. She grew up in Kankakee, Illinois, has master's and bachelor's degrees in English from the University of Chicago, has a Creative Writing M.F.A. from The New School in New York City, and has taught preschoolers to seniors in numerous schools and programs across Chicago and New York City.
Review :
Winner 2023 IBPA Benjamin Franklin Silver Award for Fiction: Mystery & Thriller
Nominated for Brown Girl Collective's Favorite 2022 Mystery/Suspense Novel
"Atmospheric, lyrical, and full of surprises, Running to Fall is a mystery wrapped inside a moving story of love, female relationships, and how darkness lurks under even the most idyllic surfaces. Layered characters and beautiful prose pulled me into the gripping narrative, rooting for troubled Tragedy even as her life unravels. Buckhanon is a powerful writer, and one to watch, and her latest outing is as breathlessly suspenseful as it is deep."-Lisa Unger, New York Times bestselling author of Secluded Cabin Sleeps Six
"Running to Fall is the compelling tale of a complicated woman haunted by her past, in a world haunted by a pandemic. It is the story of a woman named Tragedy, and the story behind her name. Her yearning for connection, refuge, and a stable home is masterfully juxtaposed against the isolation imposed on her by the alienating setting, as one of few Black residents of an Illinois exurb. She encounters a cast of equally complex women with their own secrets and regrets as she faces difficult truths and choices." -Tiffany Gholar, author of A Bitter Pill to Swallow and The Unforeseeable Future
"With prose so incisive and knowing, you feel the meaning of the words as much as you understand it, Buckhanon can infuse a mystery tale with strands of isolation, addiction, secrets, and women we allow to be forgotten, and it's riveting." -Vannessa Cronin, Amazon Book Review
"Buckhanon's weaving of thriller elements into a literary novel works beautifully... Readers interested in the challenges Black women face in suburban America and in drinking narratives that are not overly redemptive will appreciate this polished, insightful novel." - BookLife Reviews
"Buckhanon's writing is evocative as she delves into the complexities of race and belonging in a society that is often hostile to people of color. With its compelling narrative and well-drawn characters, Running to Fall is a must-read for fans of contemporary fiction and social justice." -KB in Bloom Book Blog
