Spring Books Preview, Pt. 1 (April releases)

Spring is officially a month away (only 13 days until Daylight Saving Time!), so I thought I’d share some upcoming releases that sound good. A few books are by writers whose previous work I liked, so I’m particularly looking forward to reading them. These seven books offer a range of styles and concerns, so I think everyone should be able to find at least a couple books to add to their Spring reading list.

Sleeping Giants – Rene Denfeld (Harper, March 26)

Rene Denfeld has written three absorbing novels that explore the struggle to survive in the most difficult of circumstances: The Enchanted, The Child Finder, and The Butterfly Girl. She returns with Sleeping Giants, another literary mystery involving a lone wolf female protagonist searching her past in order to solve problems in her present. Amanda Dufresne wants to learn about her birth parents and the older brother she never knew, who drowned off the Oregon coast when he was nine. What she finds is damning evidence of malpractice and abuse in the foster care system. Denfeld’s background includes working as a licensed death row investigator. She is the past Chief Investigator for a Public Defenders office. So she knows her stuff.

Sleeping Giants sounds like it was inspired in part by the story of Jennifer and Sarah Hart and the six Black children they adopted from two families in Texas. They eventually drove their van off a cliff on the Oregon coast in a murder-suicide when authorities were closing in, having learned that the children had been abused for over a decade. (Roxanna Asgarian’s book, We Were Once a Family: A Story of Love, Death, and Child Removal is an award-winning work of investigative journalism.)

The Cemetery of Untold Stories – Julia Alvarez (Algonquin Books, April 2)

Julia Alvarez is one of the legends of the Latina writing world, along with Sandra Cisneros, Cristina Garcia, and Isabel Allende. Her early novels, How the Garcia Girls Lost Their Accents (1991) and In the Time of the Butterflies (1994), are classics. In The Cemetery of Untold Stories famous author Alma Cruz inherits a cemetery back home in the Dominican Republic. She decides to use it to bury her rejected story ideas and unfinished work so she can clear her mind and move on to new stories. But her characters refuse to stay buried. Instead, they tell their stories to the cemetery caretaker, Filomena. They talk behind Alma’s back and, eventually, to her directly, forcing her to reconsider which stories must be told and whether the author is the one who gets to decide.

Village Weavers – Myriam J. A. Chancy (Tin House Books, April 2)

Village Weavers is the follow-up to Myriam J. A. Chancy’s critically acclaimed debut, What Story, What Thunder. It’s the story of the lifelong friendship of two very different girls. Growing up in 1940s Port-au-Prince, Haiti, Gertie and Sisi become close friends, despite being on opposite ends of the social and economic ladder. A family secret later destroys their friendship, and with Francois Duvalier’s rule in the 1950s turning violent, Sisi moves to Paris, while Gertie remains in Haiti and marries into a wealthy family. But this physical separation cannot keep them apart and they reconnect over time. Both women end up living in the United States and in their 60s they face their past and learn the truth behind their relationship.

The Stone Home – Crystal Hana Kim (William Morrow, April 2)

Crystal Hana Kim’s debut novel, If You Leave Me, made a big enough impression that she was named a recipient of the 2022 National Book Foundation’s 5 Under 35 Award. She returns with The Stone Home, a story that shines a light into a dark corner of South Korea’s history. During the 1980s, the government rounded up homeless people and placed them in a “reformatory center.” The narrative alternates between the story of Eunju and her mother as they form a community with the other women who work in the kitchen and two teenage brothers who form a desperate plan for survival. The Stone Home shows us the determination and resilience of these “disappeared” people as they cope with their abusive circumstances and powerlessness. Their courage, hope, and love make this a compelling read.

No More Empty Spaces – D.J. Green (She Writes Press, April 9)

Green’s debut novel explores the cracks in both nature and a family in this story of Will Ross, a divorced geologist who is hired in 1973 to assess a failing dam project in Turkey. A last-minute complication with his wife leads him to bring his three children along. No More Empty Spaces combines complex geological and environmental issues and the trials of a broken family trying to repair itself far from home. Set in the rugged, unstable earthquake zone of the Anatolian Mountains of Turkey, it is further enriched by a strong sense of place that will be foreign to nearly all of Green’s readers.

Days of Wonder – Caroline Leavitt (Algonquin Books, April 23)

Ella, 22, has just been released early from prison after serving five years for the attempted murder of her boyfriend’s father, a New York City judge. While imprisoned, she gave birth to a daughter but gave her up for adoption. Now free, she is obsessed with finding her daughter and reestablishing contact with her former boyfriend. She slowly rebuilds her life, living with her single mother and using a different name. When she locates the adoptive couple, she moves a thousand miles away so she can find out the circumstances of her daughter’s life. Days of Wonder explores obsessive love, young motherhood, what constitutes a family, and the challenges of starting over after being branded with a scarlet YM (Young Murderer) by a voracious media. Caroline Leavitt is among the best writers of multilayered coming of age stories and family dramas. Her novels are addictive melodramas, but she maintains discipline over the complicated plots by probing the many ethical dilemmas involved.

Real Americans – Rachel Khong (Knopf, April 30)

I’m particularly looking forward to reading Rachel Khong’s follow-up to her impressive debut, Goodbye Vitamin. Real Americans follows one family across three generations, starting with two scientists who flee Mao’s Cultural Revolution and end up in Tampa. The heart of the novel concerns their daughter, Lily Chen, who is, as you might expect, very different from her parents. It’s 1999 and she has just started working as an intern in New York City when she falls in love with Matthew, the son of industrialists and the opposite of Lily in nearly every way. Twenty years later, we meet their 15-year-old son Nick, who is living with his divorced mother in Washington state and wants to know about his birth father. What follows is an examination of race, class, wealth, privilege, what it means to be American, and what determines our future. Is it our genetic and cultural inheritance or can we make ourselves into whoever we want?