The Perishing, Natashia Deon
The Perishing, Natashia Deon
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The Perishing

Author: Natashia Deón

Narrator: Kevin R. Free, Lisa Reneé Pitts

Unabridged: 11 hr 22 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Publisher: Recorded Books

Published: 11/09/2021


Synopsis

A Black immortal in 1930s Los Angeles seeks to recover the memory of her past in this visionary novel from NAACP Image Award nominee Natashia Deón

Lou, a young Black woman, wakes up in an alley in 1930s Los Angeles with no memory of how she got there or where she’s from. Taken in by a caring foster family, Lou dedicates herself to her education while trying to put her mysterious origins behind her. She’ll go on to become the first Black female journalist at the Los Angeles Times, but Lou’s extraordinary life is about to take an even more remarkable turn. When she befriends a firefighter at a downtown boxing gym, Lou is shocked to realize that though she has no memory of meeting him, she’s been drawing his face for years.

Increasingly certain that their paths previously crossed—and beset by unexplainable flashes from different eras haunting her dreams—Lou begins to believe she may be an immortal sent here for a very important reason, one that only others like her can explain. Setting out to investigate the mystery of her existence, Lou must make sense of the jumble of lifetimes calling to her, just as new forces threaten the existence of those around her.

Immersed in the rich historical tapestry of Los Angeles—Prohibition, the creation of Route 66, and the collapse of the St. Francis Dam—The Perishing is a stunning examination of love and justice through the eyes of one miraculous woman whose fate seems linked to the city she comes to call home.

“Remarkable, strange, and richly inventive, Natashia Deón’s The Perishing will keep you up all night and haunt you long afterward. Deón’s newest novel is a wonder and a feat.”—R. O. Kwon, author of The Incendiaries

Author Bio

Natashia Deón is the recipient of a PEN Center USA Emerging Voices Fellowship and has been awarded fellowships and residencies at Yale, the Bread Loaf School of English, Dickinson House in Belgium, and the Virginia Center for Creative Arts. Her stories and essays have appeared in the Rumpus, Rattling Wall, B O D Y, Feminist Wire, and You: An Anthology of Second Person Essays, among others. Named one of 2013’s Most Fascinating People by LA Weekly, she has an MFA from the University of California, Riverside, and is the creator of the popular LA-based reading series Dirty Laundry Lit. She has taught creative writing for Gettysburg College, PEN Center USA, and 826LA. A practicing lawyer, she currently teaches law at Trinity Law School and Mount Saint Mary’s University.

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