Transcendent Kingdom

Author: Yaa Gyasi
Genre: Fiction
Publisher: Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group, 2021
Pages: 304
Rating: Recommend

Synopsis: Gifty is a sixth-year PhD candidate in neuroscience at the Stanford University School of Medicine studying reward-seeking behavior in mice and the neural circuits of depression and addiction. Her brother, Nana, was a gifted high school athlete who died of a heroin overdose after an ankle injury left him hooked on OxyContin. Her suicidal mother is living in her bed.

Gifty is determined to discover the scientific basis for the suffering she sees all around her. But even as she turns to the hard sciences to unlock the mystery of her family's loss, she finds herself hungering for her childhood faith and grappling with the evangelical church in which she was raised, whose promise of salvation remains as tantalizing as it is elusive.

Review: Despite it's lofty name, Transcendent Kingdom is suprisingly readable. Gyasi explores many current issues through her characters, and I found myself drawn into the narrative quickly. It was difficult to not read this as a memoir, but it's a work of fiction.