Staff Pick
Brown has emerged as a powerhouse of the social justice movement in recent years. Her fiction debut is a bleak, haunting exploration of loss, grief, and anger shot through with resilience and hope. Like all of her works, Grievers explores how we work to create a world in which we want to live. Recommended By Emily B., Powells.com
Synopses & Reviews
Grievers is the story of a city so plagued by grief that it can no longer function.
Dune's mother is patient zero of a mysterious illness that stops people in their tracks — in mid-sentence, mid-action, mid-life — casting them into a nonresponsive state from which no one recovers. Dune must navigate poverty and the loss of her mother as Detroit's hospitals, morgues, and graveyards begin to overflow. As the quarantined city slowly empties of life, she investigates what caused the plague, and what might end it, following in the footsteps of her late researcher father, who has a physical model of Detroit's history and losses set up in their basement. She dusts it off and begins tracking the sick and dying, discovering patterns, finding comrades in curiosity, conspiracies for the fertile ground of the city, and the unexpected magic that emerges when the debt of grief is cleared.
Review
“This hits the nail on the head with its deep, moving exploration of loss, family, community, gentrification, and rapidly changing urban landscapes. It's a strong precedent that will leave readers eager for more.” Publishers Weekly (Starred Review)
Review
"Grievers is a beautiful debut novella by adrienne maree brown, who is already one of our most important voices in Afrofuturism and true-life worldbuilding. Grievers could not be more timely, tackling loss, plague, gentrification, memory and grief with a path toward hope in a future Detroit. Each paragraph is lovingly crafted, a story unto itself, blending into a tapestry no reader will soon forget." Tananarive Due, American Book Award winner, author of Ghost Summer: Stories
Review
"This Detroit thriller/mystery written by adrienne maree brown is a story full of suspense, grief and an overwhelming sense of community that is determined to survive a city wide mysterious pandemic. Each character will remind you of a Detroit Ancestor or loving comrade in the struggle and has you question what life will be like after hell." Siwatu-Salama Ra, Community daughter, Mother, Detroit community organizer, prison abolitionist
Review
"Grievers is a haunting melody. Highly imaginative but with a gruesome practicality, Grievers illustrates the lengths one person will go to in order to have some self-determination in the midst of being desperately alone. I was filled with the deep, aching love that was woven throughout this story. When all that you know and love is gone, gone up in flames, gone mute or just gone 'away'... you are forced to discover and draw upon all of the resources that are tucked into your family, your history, your city for resilience, self-sufficiency and the ability to truly make a way out of no way. Gritty and tender, it dug under my skin and settled into my Detroit soul." Lottie Spady, Detroit activist and healer
About the Author
adrienne maree brown is a writer living in Detroit. She is a student of the works of Octavia E. Butler and Ursula K. Le Guin. Grievers is her first novel. Her previous books include Octavia's Brood, Emergent Strategy, Pleasure Activism, and We Will Not Cancel Us. Her visionary fiction has appeared in The Funambulist, Harvard Design Review, and Dark Mountain.