The Unsettled

May 1, 2023

Stuck with son Toussaint in a crumbling family shelter in 1985 Philadelphia, Ava wants to be the loving mother her own mother, Dutchess, never was and finds herself completely reenchanted by Toussaint's firebrand father when he drops back into her life. Meanwhile, Dutchess struggles mightily to maintain their Alabama hometown, a place of Black self-determination that has dwindled to a handful of residents. From the author of the New York Times best-selling The Twelve Tribes of Hattie. Prepub Alert.

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Copyright 2023 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

August 15, 2023
A family's struggles in Philadelphia are echoed in turmoil in its ancestral Alabama. Mathis' follow-up to her brilliant debut, the novel-in-stories The Twelve Tribes of Hattie (2013), concerns three generations of one Black family. In 1985, Ava Carson has escaped her abusive husband, Abemi Reed, but is left homeless and jobless; the shelter that accepts her and her young son, Toussaint, is roach-infested, and lingering trauma interferes with her ability to get her life in order. Toussaint, meanwhile, plays truant and becomes enmeshed in the neighborhood's street life. Mathis alternates Ava and Toussaint's ongoing plight with a storyline narrated by Ava's mother, Dutchess, a one-time traveling blues singer. She's one of the last residents of an Alabama town, Bonaparte, which is slowly becoming overrun, at times violently, by encroaching white developers from the ironically named Progress Corp., which "pulled it up like a weed and threw it facedown in the dirt." A glimmer of hope appears with the re-emergence of Toussaint's father, Cassius Wright, a doctor and former Black Panther who's trying to launch a much-needed (if technically illegal) neighborhood health clinic and strictly run commune. But order proves slippery, and the novel's very structure implies that Black families separated by distance and broken by (mainly white) policing and development become nearly impossible to sustain. Mathis' themes, and sometimes her prose, echo Their Eyes Were Watching God and Sula, two similarly lyrical stories rooted in place and relationships. Though this novel doesn't enter their ranks, Mathis powerfully evokes the heartbreak and ways best efforts are undermined by social and legal machinery. A determination among all three characters defines the story--Dutchess, Ava, and Toussaint are inheritors of abuse, but Mathis makes them objects of indomitability, not pity. An affecting and carefully drawn story of a family on the brink.

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August 1, 2023
Mathis' long-awaited sophomore novel leaves the Great Migration of her lauded debut (The Twelve Tribes of Hattie, 2012) for the 1980s, but her sharp characters, vivid settings, and beautiful sentences remain. The book centers on preteen Toussaint and his mother, Ava, in Philadelphia, and Ava's mother, Dutchess, in Bonaparte, Alabama. While the chapters with Toussaint and Ava are in third person and focus primarily on their experiences navigating Philly, group homes, and Ava's charming ex (a former Black Panther), the southern chapters are all in Dutchess' unique first-person voice. Ava is reserved and haunted, while her mother, a former singer, is all brass. Now estranged, they each search for home and family. Ava, no stranger to mistakes, strives on behalf of her son. Dutchess, who once dragged her young daughter between gigs, now mourns the loss of both Ava and Bonaparte, where five remaining Black residents gird themselves for the white developers who will vanish their town. The worlds of these two places, and these two women, mesh in surprising and gorgeous ways. Hattie fans will not be disappointed.

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Starred review from August 21, 2023
Mathis (The Twelve Tribes of Hattie) offers a simmering family saga involving fraught efforts in building Black communities. In 1985, Ava Carson and her 10-year-old son, Touissant, are thrown out of their New Jersey home by her husband, Abemi Reed, after Touissant’s father, former Black Panther Cass Wright, visited Ava, prompting Abemi to wrongly accuse her of an affair. She’s estranged from her mother, Dutchess, and with no money or options, Ava moves with Touissant into a shelter in Philadelphia. Mathis alternates perspectives between Ava and Dutchess, who still lives in Bonaparte, Ala., the historically Black town where Ava grew up. Nobody’s left in Bonaparte but Dutchess and four other old-timers, as the town’s acreage has dwindled over the years and white folks continue to encroach upon their remaining land. Ava, fed up with the filthy shelter, considers leaving for Bonaparte, but instead runs into Cass, who moves her and Touissant into his communal home where he plans to run a free medical clinic. Despite Cass’s allure, his strict rules grate on mother and son, especially after a police raid on the house shatters their calm. Mathis ratchets up the tension all the way to a stunning reveal, which reunites the family members for a reckoning with the truth. Readers won’t want to miss Mathis’s accomplished return.

Starred review from September 1, 2023

Mathis follows up her beloved The Twelve Tribes of Hattie with the story of two mothers, both bound and unbound from each other. Having drifted for much of her adult life and had son Toussaint with a man who disappeared a few months into her pregnancy, Ava Carson is happy to settle down as a married woman in New Jersey. But the anger of her righteous husband Abemi knows no bounds when Ava's old lover Cass suddenly reappears on his way to Philadelphia; soon Ava and Toussaint are stuck in a crumbling family shelter in that city. Ava has tried to be the loving mother that her own mother, Dutchess, never seemed to be--a blues singer, she drifted too and has her own sharp self-focus. But in alternate chapters told in Dutchess's fresh, bold, entrancing voice, we learn that Dutchess had sent Ava off because she knew there was nothing for her in Bonaparte, their Alabama hometown, a place of Black self-determination that has dwindled to a handful of residents. Meanwhile, in heartfelt, pellucid language that sparkles even as it cuts to the bone, readers enter Ava's troubled mind, feel the roach-infested stickiness of the shelter, and follow Ava as she rejoins Cass, only to be caught in the awful police violence of 1985 Philadelphia. VERDICT Another triumph for Mathis.--Barbara Hoffert

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