The previous books that I have read are all plot driven and the characters of some books are really not well developed. It’s been awhile since I’ve read a character driven story. “Perhaps memory is not merely the preservation of a moment in the mind, but the process of repeatedly returning to it, carefully breaking it up in parts and assembling them again until we can make sense of what we remember.” Timely, riveting, and unforgettable, The Other Americans is at once a family saga, a murder mystery, and a love story informed by the treacherous fault lines of American culture. Driss’s family confronts its secrets, a town faces its hypocrisies, and love–messy and unpredictable–is born. The aftermath of his death brings together a diverse cast of characters: Guerraoui’s daughter Nora, a jazz composer returning to the small town in the Mojave she thought she’d left for good her mother, Maryam, who still pines for her life in the old country Efraín, an undocumented witness whose fear of deportation prevents him from coming forward Jeremy, an old friend of Nora’s and an Iraqi War veteran Coleman, a detective who is slowly discovering her son’s secrets Anderson, a neighbor trying to reconnect with his family and the murdered man himself.Īs the characters–deeply divided by race, religion, and class–tell their stories, each in their own voice, connections among them emerge. Late one spring night in California, Driss Guerraoui–father, husband, business owner, Moroccan immigrant–is hit and killed by a speeding car.
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