On the Rooftop
-
- $25.99
-
- $25.99
Publisher Description
A Reese’s Book Club Pick
“An utterly original and brilliant story.” –Reese Witherspoon
A stunning novel about a mother whose dream of musical stardom for her three daughters collides with the daughters’ ambitions for their own lives—set against the backdrop of gentrifying 1950s San Francisco
At home they are just sisters, but on stage, they are The Salvations. Ruth, Esther, and Chloe have been singing and dancing in harmony since they could speak. Thanks to the rigorous direction of their mother, Vivian, they’ve become a bona fide girl group whose shows are the talk of the Jazz-era Fillmore.
Now Vivian has scored a once-in-a-lifetime offer from a talent manager, who promises to catapult The Salvations into the national spotlight. Vivian knows this is the big break she’s been praying for. But sometime between the hours of rehearsal on their rooftop and the weekly gigs at the Champagne Supper Club, the girls have become women, women with dreams that their mother cannot imagine.
The neighborhood is changing, too: all around the Fillmore, white men in suits are approaching Black property owners with offers. One sister finds herself called to fight back, one falls into the comfort of an old relationship, another yearns to make her own voice heard. And Vivian, who has always maintained control, will have to confront the parts of her life that threaten to splinter: the community, The Salvations, and even her family.
Warm, gripping, and wise, with echoes of Fiddler on the Roof, Margaret Wilkerson Sexton’s latest novel is a moving family portrait from “a writer of uncommon nerve and talent” (New York Times Book Review).
APPLE BOOKS REVIEW
This vivid, atmospheric audiobook transports you to a fascinating time and place: San Francisco’s Fillmore district in 1953. Vivian, a widowed nurse who moved to California during the Great Migration of the ’30s, is now the ambitious stage mother of Ruth, Esther, and Chloe, whom she’s shaped into a sophisticated jazz vocal trio called the Salvations. But on the verge of a career-making break, the sisters start to chafe against their mother’s plans, eager to seek passions of their own. From the rise of the Civil Rights movement to the earliest days of gentrification, this family drama explores many eras. Margaret Wilkerson Sexton follows her breakthrough novel The Revisioners with a powerful book about family, community, and joy in the face of oppression. Narrator Robin Miles captures the lyricism of Sexton’s prose, as well as the sparkling energy of the characters’ dialogue. This is a listen to get lost in.