Terah Shelton Harris

I enjoyed the book and the plot line, but the father who only speaks in stanzas of poetry was totally annoying. I had to remove one star.
After she is raped and discovers she is pregnant, Sara leaves Savannah to start her life over in Maine where she has some legal protection from her rapist and his powerful family. As her daughter grows older, Sara finds she needs to return to Savannah as her father faces a terminal illness. She discovers that her father has befriended her rapists twin brother and allows him to fund his book store renovation where he continues to work. Both David and Sara develop feelings for each other.… (mehr)

King Solomon has died suddenly at his family home, dubbed the Kingdom. The Kingdom is an heir property, family land jointly owned by descendants of a deceased person from the time the Solomon family worked the land as slaves. Now, King's children, Junior, Mance, Tokey and Cece return to the Kingdom to deal with King's death, each carrying a heavy secret of their own. The siblings learn that the Kingdom comes with a complicated path forward as large corporations swoop in on vague legalities to take the Kingdom's land. While trying to save their home, each sibling is also trying to save themselves. Junior is finally figuring out his sexuality while trying not to alienate the family he has built. Mance is dealing with his aggression while learning of his son's disability. Tokey is fighting an eating disorder while wondering why she doesn't quite fit in with her family. Cece is worrying about the consequences she will have to face from embezzling thousands of dollars from her law firm's clients. Each sibling will have to face their individual problems in order to move ahead with saving the Kingdom.

Long After We Are Gone is an emotional family drama. Told from alternating points of view of each sibling, the characters, their secrets and how they work through them take center stage. I do wish there was a better delineation between each sibling's viewpoint through each chapter. I was very interested in heir properties and how families used this to keep their property within the family only for it to become a tenuous legal situation down the road, one more issue keeping land from African American families. I was very interested in how each of the siblings dealt with their problems in secret while having strong family bonds. I didn't particularly care for more than one sibling more than another and they weren't particularly sympathetic characters, however, they were very realistic and each had interesting journeys. Long After We Are Gone examines how secrets can create larger problems and feed into generational trauma.

This book was received for free in return for an honest review.… (mehr)