Caul Baby: A Novel
(OverDrive MP3 Audiobook, OverDrive Listen)
Now in paperback, New York Times bestselling author Morgan Jerkins's fiction debut, an electrifying novel for fans of Ta-Nehisi Coates and Jacqueline Woodson, that brings to life one powerful and enigmatic family in a tale rife with secrets, betrayal, intrigue, and magic.
Laila desperately wants to become a mother, but each of her previous pregnancies has ended in heartbreak. This time has to be different, so she turns to the Melancons, an old and powerful Harlem family known for their caul, a precious layer of skin that is the secret source of their healing power.
When a deal for Laila to acquire a piece of caul falls through, she is heartbroken, but when the child is stillborn, she is overcome with grief and rage. What she doesn't know is that a baby will soon be delivered in her family—by her niece, Amara, an ambitious college student—and delivered to the Melancons to raise as one of their own. Hallow is special: she's born with a caul, and their matriarch, Maman, predicts the girl will restore the family's prosperity.
Growing up, Hallow feels that something in her life is not right. Did Josephine, the woman she calls mother, really bring her into the world? Why does her cousin Helena get to go to school and roam the streets of New York freely while she's confined to the family's decrepit brownstone?
As the Melancons' thirst to maintain their status grows, Amara, now a successful lawyer running for district attorney, looks for a way to avenge her longstanding grudge against the family. When mother and daughter cross paths, Hallow will be forced to decide where she truly belongs.
Engrossing, unique, and page-turning, Caul Baby illuminates the search for familial connection, the enduring power of tradition, and the dark corners of the human heart.
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Morgan Jerkins. (2021). Caul Baby: A Novel. Unabridged HarperAudio.
Chicago / Turabian - Author Date Citation (style guide)Morgan Jerkins. 2021. Caul Baby: A Novel. HarperAudio.
Chicago / Turabian - Humanities Citation (style guide)Morgan Jerkins, Caul Baby: A Novel. HarperAudio, 2021.
MLA Citation (style guide)Morgan Jerkins. Caul Baby: A Novel. Unabridged HarperAudio, 2021.
| Library | Owned | Available |
|---|---|---|
| Shared Digital Collection | 3 | 3 |
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Morgan Jerkins is the author of Wandering in Strange Lands and the New York Times bestseller This Will Be My Undoing and a Senior Culture Editor at ESPN's The Undefeated. Jerkins is a visiting professor at Columbia University and a Forbes 30 Under 30 leader in media, and her short-form work has been featured in the New Yorker, the New York Times, the Atlantic, Rolling Stone, Elle, Esquire, and the Guardian, among many other outlets. She is based in Harlem.
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Now in paperback, New York Times bestselling author Morgan Jerkins's fiction debut, an electrifying novel for fans of Ta-Nehisi Coates and Jacqueline Woodson, that brings to life one powerful and enigmatic family in a tale rife with secrets, betrayal, intrigue, and magic.
Laila desperately wants to become a mother, but each of her previous pregnancies has ended in heartbreak. This time has to be different, so she turns to the Melancons, an old and powerful Harlem family known for their caul, a precious layer of skin that is the secret source of their healing power.
When a deal for Laila to acquire a piece of caul falls through, she is heartbroken, but when the child is stillborn, she is overcome with grief and rage. What she doesn't know is that a baby will soon be delivered in her family—by her niece, Amara, an ambitious college student—and delivered to the Melancons to raise as one of their own. Hallow is special: she's born with a caul, and their matriarch, Maman, predicts the girl will restore the family's prosperity.
Growing up, Hallow feels that something in her life is not right. Did Josephine, the woman she calls mother, really bring her into the world? Why does her cousin Helena get to go to school and roam the streets of New York freely while she's confined to the family's decrepit brownstone?
As the Melancons' thirst to maintain their status grows, Amara, now a successful lawyer running for district attorney, looks for a way to avenge her longstanding grudge against the family. When mother and daughter cross paths, Hallow will be forced to decide where she truly belongs.
Engrossing, unique, and page-turning, Caul Baby illuminates the search for familial connection, the enduring power of tradition, and the dark corners of the human heart.
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- content: Narrator Joniece Abbot-Pratt's sweet voice and vibrant characterizations entice listeners into this first novel by bestselling writer Morgan Jerkins. Known for her memoirs and essays, Jerkins here blends magical realism and a story about the challenges faced by contemporary Black women. Harlem's Melancon women survive by selling pieces of their life-giving caul to white people who can pay well. A multigenerational crisis ensues when they refuse to help Laila, a local Black woman who has suffered numerous pregnancies. Abbott-Pratt changes her pitch atmospherically as she shifts between the Melancons' gothic domain, Laila's increasingly unhinged desperation, and the bright pace of Laila's niece, Amara, a law school student. Abbott-Pratt's melodic tone is an engrossing through line in this ambitious novel about gentrification, exploitation, generational trauma, and Black identity. A.C.S. © AudioFile 2021, Portland, Maine
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March 1, 2021
A first novel with fertility on its mind. The book opens in 1998 with a dire prediction for the luckless and pregnant Laila, a brownstone-dwelling member of the Harlem bourgeoisie. Her dismal history near ordains it: "Some of the fetuses grew, saw the dents of their past siblings in her womb, and joined them in the ether." Laila will end up having a book-length conversation with these spirits after she bloodily and publicly loses this pregnancy, then her mind. Her architect husband skulks away. Laila blames the Melancons, a notorious family of women up from Louisiana way. They refused to sell her a piece of caul, the amniotic membrane that encloses a gestating fetus. (Folk medicine links the caul to healing and protection.) The Melancons know how to fuse these membranes to their newborns' bodies and cut away chunks as the child grows, always for a hefty price--mostly for White people. As the family line sputters, the Melancons luck into the clandestine adoption of a serene infant with a perfect, intact caul. The child's teenage mother, Amara, names her Hallow and hands her off to an intermediary, eyes instead on her path through Columbia and Yale. The twist arrives two decades later as Amara, now a Manhattan assistant district attorney, seeks to prosecute the reviled and grasping Melancons only to meet her doppelg�nger, a grown Hallow. Cultural critic and essayist Jerkins, author of This Will Be My Undoing (2018), is drawn to questions of gender, family, identity, race, and belonging. The trouble lies in her leap to fiction. This novel sinks under the weight of clunky melodrama, a river of tears, an awkward bloom of adverbs, and a plot so far-fetched that interior logic collapses. Readers keen for the indelible links among Black generations would do better with Margaret Wilkerson Sexton's The Revisioners (2019) or any of Toni Morrison's novels. An intriguing idea for magical realism in Harlem delivers too little of either.COPYRIGHT(2021) Kirkus Reviews, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.
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Starred review from February 15, 2021
The Melacons are a three-generation family of women living in a brownstone in gentrifying Harlem. They are beautiful, wealthy, and famously known for their caul, an invisible layer of skin that gives them the power to heal others. Laila, newly pregnant after suffering multiple miscarriages, visits the Melacons for help to ensure she has a successful pregnancy. After a series of unexpected events, Laila's niece, Hallow, is born with caul and raised by the Melacons. As she matures, Hallow struggles with her moral compass, wondering whether she should continue the Melacon tradition of selling their caul only to wealthy white families, or use it to help their fellow native Harlemites. Jerkins' debut novel is a multilayered reflection of contemporary dilemmas with a touch of magic realism. With themes such as motherhood, acceptance, and a duty to be of service, the novel is well paced, with alluring anticipation. The writing is sharp with an empathetic undertone, encouraging readers to understand characters' choices even if they don't agree. Readers are taken through a spectrum of emotions with a satisfying payoff. On the heels of her excellent memoir Wandering in Strange Lands (2020), Jerkins solidifies herself as one of our guiding literary lights, no matter the genre.COPYRIGHT(2021) Booklist, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.
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Now in paperback, New York Times bestselling author Morgan Jerkins's fiction debut, an electrifying novel for fans of Ta-Nehisi Coates and Jacqueline Woodson, that brings to life one powerful and enigmatic family in a tale rife with secrets, betrayal, intrigue, and magic.
Laila desperately wants to become a mother, but each of her previous pregnancies has ended in heartbreak. This time has to be different, so she turns to the Melancons, an old and powerful Harlem family known for their caul, a precious layer of skin that is the secret source of their healing power.
When a deal for Laila to acquire a piece of caul falls through, she is heartbroken, but when the child is stillborn, she is overcome with grief and rage. What she doesn't know is that a baby will soon be delivered in her family—by her niece, Amara, an ambitious college student—and delivered to the Melancons to raise as one of their own. Hallow is special: she's born with a...
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