Red at the Bone

What's in this book, at a glance — five things readers want to know before they start.

What this book is about

In 2001, sixteen-year-old Melody steps out to receive her grandmother's pearls at a ceremony celebrating her emergence into womanhood. Her parents' story — a teenage pregnancy, a family's sacrifice, a promise made and kept — is told in fragments across time. And behind all of it is the Tulsa Race Massacre of 1921, which sent one branch of the family north and shaped everything that followed. Jacqueline Woodson's novella-length novel is a lyrical, precise examination of how one act of racial violence echoes across generations of a Black American family.