For any era, it’s an accomplished, affecting novel.
Mallard, Bennett writes, was a “strange town.”
You couldn’t really find it on a map.
Credit: Riverhead Books
Nobody outside it really knew about it.
Of course, it’s but a fantasy.
The community is shocked.
It’s implied that Desiree’s mother will not approve.
Why has Desiree come back?
Indeed, twin Stella emerges as equally significant.
After she and Desiree fled to New Orleans as teens, they separated.
Stella headed west, and chose to pass as white.
With “their lives splitting as evenly as their shared egg,” Bennett works backward and forward.
That legacy shapes the Vignes sisters, and then their own daughters, who complete this generational tale.
With each of these stories, Bennett simply watches.
Their decisions on how to live in the present rub up against the realities of their pasts.
So comes the reckoning.
