Aquarian Dawn

Beginning in 1966 and ending in 1975, Chizea’s ambitious debut follows a West African 15-year-old from fictional country Nabuka, who relocates to Pennsylvania to escape impending civil war. Ada Ekene and her newly single mother have just arrived in “small, quaint” Greensberg. There, Ada struggles to connect with her mother, who has grown emotionally distant since the move, and longs for her extended family back home, all while making new friends and immersing herself in U.S. culture. In the four years she lives in the U.S., she experiences romance, experiments with drugs, and attends Vietnam War protests. When her former stepfather dies in 1970 while fighting in the Nabuka civil war, Ada and her mother return to their home country to bury him, and Ada embarks on a mission to find her biological father, of whom she knows very little. Chizea only briefly touches upon Nabuka’s cultural worldbuilding and Ada’s myriad intertwining relationship conflicts, such as her search for her birth father, making these facets read as underdeveloped. Nevertheless, this character-driven volume tackles themes such as abandonment, belonging, loss, and racism via a complexly written protagonist whose charismatic personality invests readers from the very first page. Ages 14–up. (Oct.)