What We Leave Behindβ β
A novel
What We Leave Behind is a multigenerational work of historical fiction that follows the Knox family from the segregated South to the shipyards of the Pacific Northwest and the steel mills of Pittsburgh, tracing the love, sacrifice, and quiet determination that bind a family across decades of American history.
Henry and Evelyn Knox build a life through sheer will, raising a family in the shadow of a country that offers them both promise and erasure. Their eldest son, Jay, enlists in the Army chasing a baseball dream and is sent instead to Korea. When the Army conceals a truth about his service, the family must decide what dignity is worth, and what they are willing to leave behind.
What We Leave Behind is a novel about Black life in its fullness: the faith and the grief, the ambition and the tenderness, the ordinary moments that history fails to record.
