Silver sparrow: a novel
(Book)

From the New York Times Bestselling Author of An American Marriage "A love story . . . Full of perverse wisdom and proud joy . . . Jones's skill for wry understatement never wavers." -O: The Oprah Magazine "Silver Sparrow will break your heart before you even know it. Tayari Jones has written a novel filled with characters I'll never forget. This is a book I'll read more than once." -Judy Blume 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. 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. When the daughters from each family meet and form a friendship, only one of them knows they are sisters. It is a relationship destined to explode. This is the third stunning novel from an author deemed "one of the most important writers of her generation" (the Atlanta Journal Constitution). Tayari Jones is the author of four novels, including Silver Sparrow, The Untelling, and Leaving Atlanta. Jones holds degrees from Spelman College, Arizona State University, and the University of Iowa. A winner of numerous literary awards, she is a professor of creative writing at Emory University. Visit her website at www.tayarijones.com. "A tense, layered and evocative tale . . . 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." -Minneapolis Star Tribune "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." -Michele Norris of NPR's All Things Considered "It's an amazing, amazing read." -Jennifer Weiner, NBC's Today "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. 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." -Kevin Wilson in a Salon feature on writers' favorite books of 2011 "A love story . . . Full of perverse wisdom and proud joy . . . Jones's skill for wry understatement never wavers." -O: The Oprah Magazine "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." -Vogue "Silver Sparrow will break your heart before you even know it. Tayari Jones has written a novel filled with characters I'll never forget. This is a book I'll read more than once." -Judy Blume "The most immersive novel I read in 2011 . . . 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." -Slate "An exciting read all the way through." -Chicago Tribune "It's really powerful." -Diane Rehm, The Diane Rehm Show "Tayari Jones has taken Atlanta for her literary terroir, and like many of our finest novelists, she gives readers a sense of place in a deeply observed way. But more than that, Jones has created in her main characters tour guides of that region: honest, hurt, observant and compelling young women whose voices cannot be ignored . . . Impossible to put down until you find out how these sisters will disco