It’s one of those ‘just one more chapter’ kinds of books that require much last-minute changing of plans, because real life feels far less amusing, appalling, shocking, and loving than the world of its characters.” “The most immersive novel I read in 2011. This is a book I’ll read more than once.” Tayari Jones has written a novel filled with characters I’ll never forget. “Silver Sparrow will break your heart before you even know it. “Charting a vast emotional unknown is Tayari Jones’s compelling third novel, Silver Sparrow, in which a teenage girl’s coming of age in 1980s Atlanta is shadowed by her dawning understanding of a corrosive secret - her father’s second family.” Kevin Wilson in a Salon feature on writers’ favorite books of 2011 It is amazing to watch, time and time again in this book, how Jones reveals the ways in which family both creates and destroys our identity.” “In Silver Sparrow-an amazing novel about a man with two families, one hidden and one public-Jones does something breathtaking and difficult: She renders a unique family dynamic with such precision and sensitivity that it becomes universal. Michele Norris of NPR’s All Things Considered “This is a complicated, heartbreaking and very rich story about how secret sisters find each other but lose as much as they gain in the process.” Jones explores the rivalry and connection of siblings, the meaning of beauty, the perils of young womanhood, the complexities of romantic relationships and the contemporary African-American experience.” This is the third stunning novel from an author deemed 'one of the most important writers of her generation' ( the Atlanta Journal Constitution). It is a relationship destined to explode. When the daughters from each family meet and form a friendship, only one of them knows they are sisters. Set in a middle-class neighborhood in Atlanta in the 1980s, the novel revolves around James Witherspoon's two families-the public one and the secret one. With the opening line of Silver Sparrow, 'My father, James Witherspoon, is a bigamist,' author Tayari Jones unveils a breathtaking story about a man's deception, a family's complicity, and the two teenage girls caught in the middle.

“ Silver Sparrow will break your heart before you even know it. Jones’s skill for wry understatement never wavers.”

From the New York Times Bestselling Author of An American Marriage

Silver sparrow book review