HAND ME DOWNS

Abuse, madness, and passion roil three generations of an African American clan in this family drama.

Carter’s autobiographical novel stretches back to 1936, when Cynthia Harrison, a 7-year-old growing up in New York City, witnesses a fight in which her mother, Myrtle, shoots the tip of her father’s left ear off and then abandons the family to run a brothel. Cynthia’s own marital travails start when, 18 and already pregnant, she marries Jesse Lovett, a charming womanizer who serves in the Air Force. She leaves him after two years spent enduring his infidelities and the scorn of his mother, Flo, an upper-crust matron. On her own with her son, Jesse Jr., and daughter, Mickey, Cynthia starts an affair with Laurence Greene, the husband of her severely depressed friend Anna. When Flo tries to take Cynthia’s kids away and Anna experiences a psychotic episode, Laurence convinces Cynthia to flee to California with him. They take along Mickey, Jesse Jr., the couple’s illegitimate daughter, Rolynda, and Laurence’s twin sons, Mason and Robert. Alas, on the drive west, Laurence’s bullying tendencies emerge when he threatens and beats the kids for homesickness and other trivial transgressions, a pattern that will continue throughout his and Cynthia’s troubled 20-year relationship. The domineering Laurence becomes a minister, imposes harsh rules on the kids—no television, no dating, no secular music or books—and repeatedly sabotages Cynthia’s efforts to translate her gifts as a pianist and singer into professional gigs. When she is 17, Mickey is thrown out of the house by her increasingly erratic and paranoid stepfather and, in desperation, marries the boy next door—only to become the target of his terrifying abuse.

Carter’s wrenching novel has moments of stark violence, but much of its drama flows from quieter tensions that arise from muted power struggles within families and the clashing ambitions of husband and wives, parents and children. She grounds these conflicts in shrewd studies of well-drawn characters. She has a fine eye for quick, telling sketches of everyone from the flamboyant Myrtle—“She was still the stiletto stepping, multi-bangle wearing, weed toking, cigarette smoking, bourbon drinking, sailor cursing broad she’d always been”—to the oily devil Jesse Sr.: “In another one of his magnificent gestures (all the while scanning Tina, the cigarette girl’s frame as she walked by), he placed Cynthia’s hand gently on the table with his landing nicely on top of hers and said, ‘You’ve got a great voice girl—real smooth.’ ” But the author’s characters have plenty of depth and complexity. Laurence, for example, is a tyrant but sincere in his conviction that what he does is good for his family. Carter’s evocative prose brings out the inner turmoil in people beset by inchoate problems with remarkable vividness and sensitivity. “She turned the oven on to roast a whole chicken, and it was right then that she felt the pull—a strong downward tug in the core of her being,” the author writes of Anna’s sudden breakdown while cooking dinner. “The cupboard door felt heavy and every item on the shelf became an overwhelming decision. Salt. Pepper. Sage. ‘I can do this,’ she whispered.” The result is a searing portrait of strife on the most intimate of battlegrounds.

A moving study of a family spreading trauma—and redeeming affection and wisdom.