First Born Girls

About the book

'Riveting... one of America's most creative and necessary writers' SAPPHIRE
'Absorbing' TLS

A memoir about four generations of women whose lives illuminate a century of American history, by the author of Richard and Judy Book Club pick Sugar

On her second birthday in 1967, Bernice McFadden died. She was in a car crash on the motorway turnoff to Detroit. For a few minutes, she was clinically dead. From the moment of her resuscitation, we follow a remarkable life, all the way up to the publication of her first novel, Sugar.

In 80s Brooklyn, growing up in terror of her alcoholic father, young Bernice loses herself in books. But it's not until she reads Alice Walker and Toni Morrison, stories about...