Kin by Tayari Jones

Kin by Tayari Jones

* 'This is Tayari Jones's very best work.' ANN PATCHETT, author of Tom Lake

* 'Kin is a masterpiece of a novel.' OPRAH WINFREY

* 'A future classic.' ROISIN O'DONNELL, author of Nesting

*'An exquisite gift.' TIME MAGAZINE

A Most Anticipated Book for 2026 according to the New York Times, New Statesman, Guardian, Independent, Financial Times and USA Today

A yearning for their missing mothers pulls Vernice and Annie apart. It will take a devastating tragedy to bring them back together.

Vernice and Annie are 'cradle friends', born days apart in Honeysuckle, Louisiana, both destined never to know their mothers. The girls are inseparable, bound by a friendship far deeper than sisterhood. But this is the American south in the 1950s. Black girls like Vernice and Annie have to fight for every opportunity they can, and neither one can build the future they hope for in Honeysuckle. 

Gradually, inevitably, the girls drift apart. Vernice pursues her education; Annie is lured by the promise of a heady first love affair and a growing obsession with finding her mother. But her search pulls her even further into a world of danger that soon leaves her oldest friend battling to save her. 

Tayari Jones returns with an exuberant, richly told story about mothers, daughters, and a lifelong friendship that is as dangerous as it is unbreakable.

'Kin is the kind of all-encompassing reading experience I'm always hoping to find: smart and funny and deftly profoundThis is Tayari Jones’s very best work.' Ann Patchett, author of Tom Lake

'It’s among Tayari's many gifts that she can touch us soul to soul with her words.'

'Jones's prose is chock-full of lyricism, grace and wisdom.'

Tayari Jones is the internationally bestselling author of four novels, most recently An American Marriage, winner of the Women’s Prize for Fiction 2019. Born in Atlanta, Jones is a graduate of Spelman College, University of Iowa, and Arizona State University. She is currently professor of Creative Writing at Emory University and an Andrew Dickson White Professor-at-Large at Cornell University.