Set in 1970s Uganda, this bewitching coming-of-age novel introduces readers to a smart, feisty heroine, Kirabo Nnamiiro, and her complicated extended family. Though deeply loved by the grandparents who are raising her, Kirabo yearns for knowledge of the woman who abandoned her at birth. She consults Nsuuta, the village seer, who recognizes in Kirabo evidence of the local myth of the first women; fiercely independent, changeable, and powerful, like the water from which they came. An exceptional student, Kirabo moves to Kampala, where her father has agreed to finance her education. It is here, as an observer of her unhappy, powerless stepmother and under the influence of her self-sufficient, modern aunt Abi, that Kirabo will learn to unravel the complexity of her lineage and to navigate the rapidly changing world for women in a modern Uganda. Though the novel is rife with the everyday fact of disappointment and loss, the overall atmosphere is one of joyous, feminist abandon. VERDICT A recipient of the Windham-Campbell Prize for Fiction and the Kwani Manuscript Project for her first novel, Kintu, UK-based Makumbi is a mesmerizing storyteller, slowly pulling readers in with a captivating cast of multifaceted characters and a soupçon of magical realism guaranteed to appeal to fans of Isabel Allende, Julia Alvarez, or Yaa Gyasi's Homegoing.—Sally Bissell, formerly with Lee Cty. Lib. Syst., Fort Myers, FL

Makumbi's arresting bildungsroman (after Kintu) centers on a Ugandan woman growing up in the 1970s as she searches for answers about her mother. As a child, Kirabo lives in rural Nattetta with her paternal grandparents and is occasionally visited by her father, Tom, a successful businessman in Kampala. Though Kirabo is well-loved, she longs to know more about the mother who abandoned her as a baby. When Kirabo is 12, Nsuuta, the local witch and her grandfather's lover, claims that Kirabo embodies "original state": the vigor and strength all women possessed before these qualities were destroyed by culture and traditions. Nsuuta also advises Kirabo to avoid looking for her mother, in order to spare her the inevitable rejection from acknowledging a child born outside marriage. When her meetings with Nsuuta are discovered, Kirabo's grandmother sends her to Kampala, but Tom's wife refuses to raise another woman's child, leading Tom to send her to a girls' boarding school where she thrives intellectually, suffers from loneliness, and falls in love. Kirabo, a strong, empathetic protagonist, reveals a society where women are routinely pitted against one another or silenced. This beautifully rendered saga is a riveting deconstruction of social perceptions of women's abilities and roles. (Sept.)