✰ 獲選數家國際媒體2022年最令人期待的小說！ 妳也許無法改變整個家族的歷史，但妳可以許他一個色彩斑斕的未來。 一本歷經數十載、橫跨三代，讓人無法抗拒的女性成長故事。 小說訴說美國一南方黑人家族三代七十年間的變遷。1995年，十歲的瓊和母親、妹妹逃離父親，到母親在田納西州孟菲斯市的老家避難，暴力已多次為她們家族帶來陰影。 A spellbinding debut novel tracing three generations of a Southern Black family and one daughter’s discovery that she has the power to change her family’s legacy. Summer 1995: Ten-year-old Joan, her mother, and her younger sister flee her father’s explosive temper and seek refuge at her mother’s ancestral home in Memphis. This is not the first time violence has altered the course of the family’s trajectory. Half a century earlier, Joan’s grandfather built this majestic house in the historic Black neighborhood of Douglass—only to be lynched days after becoming the first Black detective in the city. Joan tries to settle into her new life, but family secrets cast a longer shadow than any of them expected. As she grows up, Joan finds relief in her artwork, painting portraits of the community in Memphis. One of her subjects is their enigmatic neighbor Miss Dawn, who claims to know something about curses, and whose stories about the past help Joan see how her passion, imagination, and relentless hope are, in fact, the continuation of a long matrilineal tradition. Joan begins to understand that her mother, her mother’s mother, and the mothers before them persevered, made impossible choices, and put their dreams on hold so that her life would not have to be defined by loss and anger—that the sole instrument she needs for healing is her paintbrush.