GONE LIKE YESTERDAY

A lyrical debut novel that asks what we owe to our families, what we owe to our ancestors, and what we owe to ourselves. Janelle M. Williams's Gone Like Yesterday employs magical realism to explore the majestic and haunting experience of being a Black woman in today's America.

Days before jaded college prep coach Zahra Robinson's older brother Derrick goes missing, she meets Sammie, an outspoken Trini-American teenager who reminds Zahra of her brother. Since she was young, Zahra has heard the voices of her ancestors singing to her through moths, and when she realizes Sammie can hear them too, they must figure out together why these spirits haunt them and what exactly they could be trying to tell them. As they travel from Harlem to Atlanta to find Derrick, their encounters with the past bring them closer to Derrick and to each other, leading them to unravel threads of their identities they had long left unexplored. For fans of Little Fires Everywhere and Such a Fun Age, GONE LIKE YESTERDAY is a sharp, literary exploration of racial identity, family, and self, and what it means to be found. Janelle M. Williams received her BA from Howard University and her MFA in Creative Writing from Manhattanville College. She was a 2017 Kimbilio Fiction Fellow, where she was in workshop with author Deesha Philyaw. She is currently a senior program manager at Writopia Lab and a non-fiction editor for Inkwell. Her work has appeared in Prairie Schooner, The Normal School, Shenandoah, Passages North, and Lunch Ticket, among others. Her flash fiction story, Harlem Thunder, was longlisted for the Wigleaf Top 50 in 2020.