After returning home to Brooklyn to care for her dying father, the narrator August reflects on her childhood and her present in a series of short, fragmentary passages. The novel begins with “for a long time, my mother wasn’t dead yet” (1), suggesting that her story, although sad, could have been worse. She wonders if jazz and blues would have helped her and her friends cope with their realities. August things back to her life at 15: she lacked such outlets, so her father referred her to Sister Sonja, a fellow member of the Nation of Islam. However, August indicates that she took more solace in her friendships than in Sister Sonja’s counseling.

Now, twenty years later, August meets her younger brother after their father’s death. He is still a devout Muslim and invites August to stay with him and his pregnant wife, Alafia. August declines the offer. She is an anthropologist who studies the rituals around death and takes solace in her knowledge rather than in Allah. What troubles her is not her father’s death, but rather the memories of her youth that her trip home has stirred up. As she heads back to her father’s apartment, she runs into her old friend

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