PRIDE AND JOY

Louisa Onomé's adult debut. With the off-the-wall family dynamics of Jesse Q. Sutanto's Dial A For Aunties, RISEN is a massively entertaining examination of family, faith, and community.

When Mama Mary, the matriarch of the Okafor family, passes away during her birthday party -- which also happens to be on Good Friday -- her daughter Joy, son Michael, and their cousins figure that a funeral fitting of such a godly woman is in order.

Then Auntie Nancy has a premonition (yes, a real one!) saying her dearly departed sister will rise from the dead in three days -- like Jesus Christ himself -- and Joy can't help but think her aunt has been reading too many Resurrection stories.

But as word begins to spread about the Okafor family's impending "miracle," the line between fact and fiction starts to blur. After all, if Jesus rose from the grave in three days, what's stopping Mama? Between local media coverage, tech savvy aunties, and a vigil that goes viral, the Okafors find themselves in a position of unlikely celebrity -- right up there with "Toast Jesus" and "Crying Statue."

As the media circus intensifies, the Okafor family begins to unravel. Under the glare of the spotlight, long buried secrets are uncovered, tensions finally boil over, and familial relationships are tested. Joy and Michael (along with an assortment of cousins, aunts, uncles, children, neighbors, church ladies, etc) struggle to save their family in the three days before their lord and savior -- and possibly their mother -- rises again.

Louisa Onomé is a Nigerian-Canadian writer of books for teens and adults. She is the author of LIKE HOME (Delacorte/ HC CA; 2021) and the forthcoming TWICE AS PERFECT (Macmillan/ HC CA; 2022). She holds a BA in professional writing from York University and also works as a narrative designer.