MahoganyBooks is excited to welcome native Washingtonian, Morowa Yejidé, to MahoganyBooks Front Row for the launch event of her second book, Creatures of Passage. The critically acclaimed novelist and 2015 NAACP Image Award nominee will discuss the book Tananarive Due called a "beautifully written and gloriously conceived novel" with conversation host and MahoganyBooks Co-Owner, Derrick Young. Join us on March 16th at 5:30PM to celebrate the release of Morowa's haunting new creation, Creatures of Passage. See you on the Front Row.

Nephthys Kinwell is a taxi driver of sorts in Washington, DC, ferrying passengers in a 1967 Plymouth Belvedere with a ghost in the trunk. Endless rides and alcohol help her manage her grief over the death of her twin brother, Osiris, who was murdered and dumped in the Anacostia River.

Unknown to Nephthys when the novel opens in 1977, her estranged great-nephew, ten-year-old Dash, is finding himself drawn to the banks of that very same river. It is there that Dash--reeling from having witnessed an act of molestation at his school, but still questioning what and who he saw--has charmed conversations with a mysterious figure he calls the "River Man."

When Dash arrives unexpectedly at Nephthys's door bearing a cryptic note about his unusual conversations with the River Man, Nephthys must face what frightens her most.

Morowa Yejidé's deeply captivating novel shows us an unseen Washington filled with otherworldly landscapes, flawed super-humans, and reluctant ghosts, and brings together a community intent on saving one young boy in order to reclaim itself.

"In this beautifully written and gloriously conceived novel, Morowa Yejidé reveals her mastery yet again. This book is both contemporary and ancient, frightening and stirring, playful and wise, an unforgettable blurring of reality and genres from its haunted Plymouth automobile to the mysteries in the fog in this alternate America and hidden Washington, DC. With its lyricism and bold imagination, Creatures of Passage is unlike anything you've ever read."
--Tananarive Due, author of Ghost Summer: Stories

MOROWA YEJIDÉ, a native of Washington, DC, is the author of the critically acclaimed novel Time of the Locust, which was a 2012 finalist for the PEN/Bellwether Prize, long-listed for the 2015 PEN/Bingham Prize, and a 2015 NAACP Image Award nominee. She lives in the DC area with her husband and three sons. Creatures of Passage is her second novel.

Derrick and Ramunda Young are owners/founders of the award-winning, MahoganyBooks in Washington, DC where they focus on books for, by and about people of the African Diaspora. The couple have been featured in Oprah Magazine, TIME Magazine, Essence, Washington Post Steve Harvey TV and Wall Street Journal among others. Learn more at mahoganybooks.com

Morowa Yejidé Discusses Creatures of Passage at MahoganyBooks