Rootless

DEBUT Giving voice to the misgivings around motherhood and the pressures that those closest to us can bring to bear on pivotal decisions, this debut cracks the personal and familial wide open. Efe met Sam when she first arrived in the UK from Ghana in 1997. Sam was an earlier arrival from Ghana, already familiar with school in England. Nineteen years later, Sam races up the steps to their London apartment, breathlessly looking for Efe and the £1,300 missing from their bank account, while their young daughter Liv asks after her mother. The years from meet-cute to missing mother take readers on an intimate and painful journey with Efe as she grapples with cultural and familial forces that shape her life and decisions. Does she want a child? Sam does, and he makes no secret of it, pressuring Efe. Efe feels torn between her family community in Ghana and the less familiar, fast-paced material life in London. How could she grow to understand herself, much less raise a family she’s not sure she even wants, in this uncertain environment?