Tayari Jones is one of those “overnight” success stories who has been writing beautiful and thoughtful books for years. With her fourth novel, An American Marriage, Tayari has given us a true masterpiece. This heartbreaking, suspenseful, and intricately crafted book tells the story of a young, ambitious Black couple in Atlanta whose marriage is exploded by the wrongful arrest and incarceration of the husband for a violent crime he did not commit. What follows is a story of loyalty, betrayal, devastation, impossible moral dilemmas, and stubborn regeneration.

I have the highest admiration for Tayari as a novelist, because she unflinchingly places her characters in the most complex and impossible moral dilemmas, and then allows them to express their fullest humanity as they struggle to find a way through. Her characters are never what you expect. They are flawed people in fraught circumstances, and in Tayari’s outrageously gifted hands, they are dimensional and complicated, believable and thought-provoking.

This is an unforgettable tale by a writer at the top of her game.

Find book club resources for An American Marriage here.