In this lyrical, unsentimental, and compelling memoir, the son of a black African father and a white American mother searches for a workable meaning to his life as a black American. It begins in New York, where Barack Obama learns that his father, a figure he knows more as a myth than as a man, has been killed in a car accident. This sudden death inspires an emotional odyssey - first to a small town in Kansas, from which he retraces the migration...

"From the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of Tinkers, a novel inspired by the true story of Malaga Island, an isolated island off the coast of Maine that became one of the first racially integrated towns in the Northeast. In 1792, formerly enslaved Benjamin Honey and his Irish wife, Patience, discover an island where they can make a life together. Over a century later, the Honeys' descendants and a diverse group of neighbors are desperately poor, isolated,...

Twelve-year-old Anna must dig deep into her Hawaiian roots in order to save her best friend and her island from an angry fire goddess. 12-year-old Lei is forced to spend summers in Hawaiʻi with her grandma who is determined to make sure she knows all her family's moʻolelo--stories the kids back home donʻt care about or believe. But after insulting Pele, the Goddess of Fire, she learns just how real these legends are when the goddess takes her...

During the early days of the Civil War, the Pruitt family takes in two mysterious young ladies who have fled New Orleans to come north to Illinois.