Transcendent Kingdom: A novel

NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • A TODAY SHOW #ReadWithJenna BOOK CLUB PICK! • Finalist for the WOMEN'S PRIZEYaa Gyasi's stunning follow-up to her acclaimed national bestseller Homegoing is "a book of blazing brilliance" (The Washington Post)—a powerful, raw, intimate, deeply layered novel about a Ghanaian family in Alabama.
Gifty is a sixth-year PhD candidate in neuroscience at the Stanford University School of Medicine studying reward-seeking behavior in mice and the neural circuits of depression and addiction. Her brother, Nana, was a gifted high school athlete who died of a heroin overdose after an ankle injury left him hooked on OxyContin. Her suicidal mother is living in her bed.
Gifty is determined to discover the scientific basis for the suffering she sees all around her. But even as she turns to the hard sciences to unlock the mystery of her family's loss, she finds herself hungering for her childhood faith and grappling with the evangelical church in which she was raised, whose promise of salvation remains as tantalizing as it is elusive.
Amazon.com Review
Yaa Gyasi’s debut
Homegoing was a sweeping, multi-generational novel that covered 300 years of Ghanaian and American history. It was moving and powerful, and it announced a rare new talent. The question was, how would she follow up that novel?
Transcendent Kingdom is contemporary and grounded in one time period, but it is equally impressive. Gyasi’s talent is very real and very consistent. The story introduces Gifty, a PhD candidate in neuroscience at Stanford. She studies addiction and depression in mice, but addiction and depression exist in her family as well. Her once-promising brother died of a heroin overdose, and her depressed mother believes only prayer can heal her. Gifty is very much a contemporary, forward-looking character—a Ghanaian-American woman who is excelling in science at one of the best schools in the world—but she is also drawn by memories of faith and family in Alabama where she grew up. There are differences between Gyasi’s first two novels, but both are inhabited by characters that are multi-dimensional and
real. And both are brilliant. –
Chris Schluep, Amazon Book Review
Editors' pick: Filled with depth and emotion, Gifty is one of the most interesting, fully realized characters I have read this year."—Chris Schluep, Amazon Editor