"McFadden works a kind of miracle--not only do [her characters] retain their appealing humanity; their story eclipses the bonds of history to offer continuous surprises. . . . While they inhabit these pages they live, and they do so gloriously and messily and magically, so that we are at last sorry to see them go, and we sit with those small moments we had with them and worry over them, enchanted, until they become something like our own memories, dimmed by time, but alive with the ghosts of the past, and burning with spirits."--Jesmyn Ward, The New York Times Book Review(editors' choice), on Gathering of Waters Sherry has struggled all her life to understand who she is, where she comes from, and, most important, why her mother slapped her cheek one summer afternoon. The incident has haunted Sherry, and it causes her to dig into her family's history, which is fractured and stubbornly reluctant to reveal its secrets; but Sherry is determined to know the full story. In Nowhere Is a Place, Bernice L. McFadden spins a fully realized and memorable portrait of a young woman on a journey of self-discovery. Bernice L. McFaddenis the author of eight critically acclaimed novels including the classic Sugar, Gathering of Waters, and Glorious. She lives in Brooklyn, New York.