One Read 2017: "The Turner House" by Angela Flournoy

The Turners’ house on Yarrow Street in Detroit has been their home for sixty years. It is worth only a tenth of the mortgage and is surrounded by houses that have been foreclosed on and picked over for metal and concrete to sell. Despite no one living in the house anymore, the Turners are determined to keep it.

"The Turner House" jumps between present day and the 1940s when Francis and Viola Turner were struggling through life and marriage. As the novel progresses, we see many similarities between young Francis and Viola and their now-grown children.

The story primarily follows the oldest and youngest Turner children, Cha-Cha and Lelah, respectively. It opens with a chapter of Cha-Cha at fourteen years old insisting he was awoken by a haint. Present day Cha-Cha struggles with this experience throughout the novel and is required by his company to see a therapist after crashing a semi-truck, supposedly because of seeing the haint.

Lelah struggles with a gambling addiction and has tried attending gamblers anonymous meetings, but she still finds herself at the casino with chips in her hand. She borrows money from coworkers and is constantly late on her rent, to the point where when she is first introduced in the novel, she has just been evicted and is quickly stuffing her belongings into trash bags and boxes. She does not even tell her own daughter, Brianne, who is a single mother like she was, and instead insists on babysitting Brianne’s son so she has a place to stay during the day.

In flashbacks, Francis Turner’s struggle with alcohol is told, primarily through the eyes of Cha-Cha. Viola would send Cha-Cha to be sure Francis was not drinking, and Cha-Cha would watch from his car as Francis drank beer after beer from his own vehicle. The parents wanted to be sure that Francis did not drink in front of the children, but Cha-Cha wondered why he was not considered one of the children in this case.

By the end of the story, details of addiction and ghosts and falling short and forgiveness are shown to be qualities that have been passed from parents to children. The reader is given faith that each generation is improving a little, or at least learning to deal with their problems. Cha-Cha finds a way to be comfortable with the haint that haunts him. Brianne starts to make up with her ex and hopefully give her son a father. While the novel does not end by wrapping every storyline up with a neat little bow, it does set the characters on what will hopefully be the right path.

Flournoy’s writing is simple and easy to read, but also full of interesting minute details that give the reader an inside perspective to her characters and their world. She says Francis guessed a woman he met was in her late 30s because of “the way the skin between her breasts folded like a tiny accordion when she put them in a brassiere.” These details Flournoy includes brings her story to life and keeps her readers turning pages.

One Read is coordinated by the Daniel Boone Regional Library, which has branches in Fulton, Columbia, and Ashland, Mo. Its goal is to have as many people read the same book and have meaningful discussions about it. A panel chooses what book to feature in the spring, and events are held in the community to foster the discussion of the book and its themes. Last year, George Hodgman, author of the 2016 One Read book "Bettyville," read excerpts from his book on Westminster’s campus.

THE TURNER HOUSE

By Angela Flournoy

Houghton Mifflin Harcourt