Fiction

Living in small-town Utah has always been an uncomfortable fit for Tunde Akinola’s family, especially for his Nigeria-born parents. Though Tunde speaks English with a Midwestern accent, he can’t escape the children who rub his skin and ask why the black won’t come off. As he struggles to fit in, he finds little solace from his parents who are grappling with their own issues.

Tunde’s father, ever the optimist, works tirelessly chasing his American dream while his wife, lonely in Utah without family and friends, sinks deeper into schizophrenia. Then one otherwise-ordinary morning, Tunde’s mother wakes him with a hug, bundles him and his baby brother into the car, and takes them away from the only home they’ve ever known.

But running away doesn’t bring her, or her children, any relief; once Tunde’s father tracks them down, she flees to Nigeria, and Tunde never feels at home again. He spends the rest of his childhood and young adulthood searching for connection—to the wary stepmother and stepbrothers he gains when his father remarries; to the Utah residents who mock his father’s accent; to evangelical religion; to his Texas middle school’s crowd of African-Americans; to the fraternity brothers of his historically black college. In so doing, he discovers something that sends him on a journey away from everything he has known.

The year is 2172. Climate change and nuclear disasters have rendered much of earth unlivable. Only the lucky ones have escaped to space colonies in the sky.

In a war-torn Nigeria, battles are fought using flying, deadly mechs and soldiers are outfitted with bionic limbs and artificial organs meant to protect them from the harsh, radiation-heavy climate. Across the nation, as the years-long civil war wages on, survival becomes the only way of life.

Two sisters, Onyii and Ify, dream of more. Their lives have been marked by violence and political unrest. Still, they dream of peace, of hope, of a future together.

And they’re willing to fight an entire war to get there.

Breaking into the newspaper business in 1960s Sydney—a competitive world dominated by hard-edged men—isn’t easy for a woman. But Blaise Hill is far from ordinary. The only female in The Clarion’s newsroom, her long-held dream of being a reporter has come true. Blaise isn’t chasing stories just to make a name for herself; she’s helping support her family and her beloved sister Ivy, whose life has been transformed by polio.

But the ambitious young journalist’s confidence is shaken when she secretly witnesses the murder of a top crime boss—a death that rocks the Sydney underworld. One of the few people who knows what really happened—and what Blaise knows—is the handsome, enigmatic Adam Rule, who helps cover up the murder. When she gets a plum assignment—moving to England to cover the British royal family—Blaise hopes to put it all behind her.

Carving her own path among the scandal and intrigue of the Swinging Sixties in London, life is just about perfect—until the night she attends Queen Elizabeth’s gala in honor of the upcoming nuptials of Princess Margaret and Antony Armstrong-Jones. Among the exclusive crowd is the last man she ever wanted to see—Adam Rule.

Is Blaise’s dark secret coming back to hurt her—or is this the beginning of something far more dangerous?

In this mesmerizing novel, Alexandra Joel brings to life the thrilling, colorful world of 1960s Sydney and London, when fashion, music, society, and even the royal family rode the waves of change—and a spirited, ambitious heroine dared to make her way in a man’s world.