TANGLEROOT by Kalela Williams gets a starred Booklist review

A contemporary Black teen digs into the mysteries and secrets of family heritage in this complex debut. The summer before college, Sophronia “Noni” Reid wins a prestigious Boston internship in costume design. Instead, Dr. Castine, her mother (freshly divorced), takes the two of them south to her rural hometown of Magnolia, Virginia, where she is installed as president of Stonepost College. They move into Tangleroot, the plantation house that their ancestor, Cuffee Fortune, built on land left to him by his enslaver, Thomas Dearborn, after the Civil War. Dr. Castine’s goal is to prove that Fortune also constructed the college. But what about Noni’s goals? Her disinterest in their new home is clear until she stumbles on the gravestone of Sophronia “Sophie” Dearborn, who died in 1859 at age 18, alongside her newborn. From there, a fascination with the Dearborns is born. The depth of the author’s historical research is evident in her creation of both an enslaved person’s narrative and the diary of a plantation owner’s daughter. Rape culture is presented off the page as an element of racism past and present. Noni undergoes a thoughtful transformation from an immature, disengaged teen into a young woman who is accountable for her mistakes and owns her identity; Williams’ work is one to keep an eye on. — Angela Carstensen