Bone-deep, involving metaphors that strike poetry’s best chords, Gyasi’s prose aims with raw precision. The book is as much a tale of devastation and growing-up-too-fast resolve as it is the shadow sibling of a psalm. Through Gyasi’s fantastic interplay of scientific study and life-spanning narrative, she crafts a character who, like so many who have taken a step back from their faith, does not simply or stubbornly “fell the long-growing tree of her belief” without a struggle. Transcendent Kingdom is as much a tale of devastation and growing-up-too-fast resolve as it is the shadow sibling of a psalm. It is not hard to see why Gifty ultimately makes a habit of entering church and simply looking upon Christ’s face-no prayer, simply trying “to make order, make sense, make meaning of the jumble of it all.” The book traces Gifty’s shifting relationship with her childhood faith tradition and the God found therein. Their evangelical church community serves as a reminder that Christianity is not a racism-free zone.

These details also shape a disturbing portrait of racism as experienced by Gifty’s Ghanian immigrant family in their new home of Huntsville, Ala. Gyasi writes about life as it is lived, in the details: the painkillers hidden inside a light fixture, the cutting dialogue between mother and child, the scent of cooking oil.

Gyasi creates characters that are fully human: real people with real pain, schoolgirl journals filled with years of entries addressed to God, smell-induced memories that haunt.

Transcendent kingdom by yaa gyasi