Ghalen: A Romance in Black

Mosley (Down the River unto the Sea) stacks a distinctive coming-of-age narrative onto a tender love story. The novel begins in 1999 Los Angeles, where Jamilah Fenestra and Robert Horton meet while shopping at a farmers market and she shares her umbrella with him. A scientist and a cook, respectively, their differences complement each other—she’s analytical and practical, he’s creative but often “lost in places or thought”—and they raise a precocious son, Ghalen, whose world is rocked in fifth grade, when Jamilah is diagnosed with liver cancer and dies soon after. At 16, Ghalen is poised to graduate early from high school, and he works as a pastry chef with Robert at a fancy restaurant in Beverly Hills, but his future remains clouded by the loss of Jamilah, whose memories are a constant for Robert. Mosley is particularly effective at rendering the father and son’s bond in her absence, and he adds grit and heartache to his depiction of Ghalen finding his way as a young man, from visiting a childhood friend in the hospital who’s in police custody for assault charges to exploring sex with his first love. Mosley’s relaxed pacing and rhythmic prose are deceptively simple. Readers will fall in love with this bighearted family saga. Agent: Gloria Loomis, Watkins/Loomis. (May)