One Leg on Earth

The marvelous debut novel from National Book Award finalist Aguda (Ghostroots, a story collection) follows a young woman whose arrival in Lagos for an exciting career opportunity coincides with a series of harrowing suicides by pregnant women. After graduating university, Yosoye Bakare, lands an internship at Jegede & Kyari Design, the architecture firm developing Omi City, a controversial reclaimed land project for Lagos’s elite. Meanwhile, pregnant women are drowning themselves in the Atlantic and in lakes throughout Lagos, an inexplicable phenomenon that worries Yosoye, who’s recently gotten pregnant from a one-night stand. Though she is haunted by dreams and visions of the dead women luring her to water, Yosoye clings to her workplace relationships, which improve after the firm’s enigmatic and prophetic leader likens her pregnancy to the firm “gestating” the “blank slate” that is Omi City. But the discovery of four bodies along a nearby coastline—and the firm’s directive to bury the scandal lest investors pull their funding—pushes Yosoye to a breaking point both liberating and horrifying. Aguda delivers a clear-eyed exploration of daughterhood, community, and the human costs of urban development, powered by an immersive portrait of a woman wrestling with the question of whom and what she’s willing to sacrifice for the life she wants. This is unforgettable. Agent: Renée Zuckerbrot, Renée Zuckerbrot Literary. (May)