"When you're fifteen, pain skips over reason, aims right for marrow... When you're fifteen, the world collapses in a moment... When you're fifteen, you can't make promises of a return to the before place. Your aging eyes tell a different, truer story."

A moving and evocative coming of age story about a young girl in Brooklyn who navigates maternal loss, friendship, betrayal, and the inevitability of adulthood.

This is the second Woodson I have read and she is now not only a must-read author but one of my favorites. Another Brooklyn is everything I look for in a novel: complete immersion into the lives of characters whose realities I have not lived.

This is a beautiful telling of the push and pull on a young girl's heart as she navigates the experiences adolescence puts upon her and emerges, fully grown, into the world. I am stunned by Woodson's ability to convey such rich characters and deep encounters in such a short narrative. I can only assume she has personal experience with mothers who are not present or involved because, once again, she nailed that dynamic with depth and sensitivity.

The end brought me to tears. I was on vacation and found myself stumbling around trying to get myself ready for the day, not at all in Atlanta but completely entrenched in the burgeoning experience of 1970s Brooklyn, proclaiming to everyone whose path I crossed that they need to read this book!

My only criticism is although she told a complete story, I could have used a little more insight into what happened to a few of the side characters. But ultimately I was quite satisfied with the journey she took me on.