Vernice (Niecy) and Annie are childhood best friends, cradle sisters, growing up in Honeysuckle, Louisiana. Neither has a mother: Annie’s ran off when she was just a baby, left to be raised by her grandmother and Niecy’s mother was shot and killed by her father, who then killed himself. She was raised by her mother’s sister, Irene. Tayari Jones’s novel, Kin, traces the fortunes of these girls over many years in alternating voices.

Each girl has a complicated relationship with their absent mother. Niecy says

While I was tended to, I was never mothered. Many people suffered far more, even people raised at the knees of their actual mothers. Still, the hole in my spirit made me into the girls I was and then the woman that I am.

Annie’s grandmother tells her “”I can’t say what’s a harder cross to bear. Me having Hattie Lee for a daughter or you trying to be her daughter. She was my youngest. Number six. And how she did me when she was being born, she made sure no other baby could come behind her. She’s been like that all her life, salting the fields on her way out.”

The novel follows the girls as they grow up. Then, one day, Annie runs off with Clyde, Bobo and Babydoll. She heads to Memphis where, last she heard, her mother resided. Niecy is heartsick when she loses her best friend, but she is headed for college in Atlanta. Life has different things planned for the girls. Despite the road each girl travels, they are each other’s chosen family, their ‘person’. But the book gives them very separate stories and for much of the novel, those lives are lived apart. I found each girl interesting and their journeys were also interesting, but I wasn’t as invested in either of them as I thought I might be. I couldn’t tell you why.

On the plus side – I enjoyed the writing a lot. The book gave me lots to think about. As a middle aged white woman (it’s probably a stretch to characterize myself as ‘middle aged’, I know!) who grew up in Canada, I know next to nothing about the experiences of Black women in the south in the 1950s. There were some funny moments and some tender moments, too.

The story moves along, but in some cases I think I felt a little short changed. For example, Niecy’s relationship with Joette felt superficial because we didn’t really see how it developed. The ending, purported to be devastating, left me feeling …well, not very much, really. Did I enjoy my read? Sure. It was an easy book to sink into. Would I recommend it? Sure – lots of people would love it. Did I love it? Not really.