Angela Johnson

On a visit to her grandmother Ola, who is dying of cancer in her house in the desert, fourteen-year-old Emmie hears many stories about the past and her family history and comes to a better understanding of relatives both dead and living. The videotaping is Ola's idea--Ola, Emmie's grandma who lives in the California desert is dying of cancer. Emmie and her mother have come to "the dry" to pack up Ola's house and take her back to a hospital in Cleveland....

Sweet leaves her family and goes to live in a cabin in the woods with the quiet but understanding Curtis, to whom she feels intensely connected, just as he is called back to serve again in Iraq.

A collection of poems reminiscent of growing up as an African-American girl in Shorter, Alabama.

Eight-year-old Lila, born with xeroderma pigmentosum, a skin disease that make her sensitive to sunlight, makes secret plans to feel the sun's rays on her ninth birthday.

In "Heaven," a lie threatens to break apart Marley's family; in "First part last," Bobby must learn what it means to be a man; and in "Sweet, hereafter" Shoogy meets Curtis and learns to stop isolating herself.