WHEN IT'S YOUR TURN FOR MIDNIGHT

“Words kill.”

Fifteen-year-old Chianti Minana learns this truth when, in a heated moment, her mother blurts out a long-kept secret: Baba isn’t Chianti’s biological father. Mama leaves Harare for a European tour with her band, and a distressed Chianti runs away to her maternal grandmother, Ambuya, in Mutare. She ignores texts from Mama and little sisters Taren and Tisha but is devastated by Baba’s silence. At Ambuya’s, Chianti gets swept up in the intertwined lives of the gogos, or grandmothers—Ambuya’s best friends, Stella, Tapera, and Ropa—and Mr. Kingsley Pfupajena. The quintet’s close bonds were forged in the 1970s when they fought for liberation in the Zimbabwe War of Independence. Together they run their business, Chedu, buying bales of secondhand clothes that they repurpose into fresh fashions. Soon Chianti is helping to create TikToks to promote Chedu. As she rests and heals in the elders’ warm embrace, Chianti also starts digging around, uncovering old photos and a notebook that pique her curiosity about their wartime days, about which they’re cagey and reticent. With a few deftly chosen words, Musariri’s poetic writing breathes life into her characters’ complex, authentic relationships and the well-realized setting that highlights natural beauty. As Gogo Tapera says, “We haven’t come this far to live on mute.…There is life and there is living; we’re living.” The nuanced exploration of what we say—and choose not to say—will encourage deep reflection.

A sparkling jewel of a story grounded in emotional truths.