Filled with knowledge that only comes from a life fully lived, The Correspondent is a gem of a novel about the power of finding solace in literature and connection with people we might never meet in person. It is about the hubris of youth and the wisdom of old age, and the mistakes and acts of kindness that occur during a lifetime.

Sybil Van Antwerp has throughout her life used letters to make sense of the world and her place in it. Most mornings, around half past ten, Sybil sits down to write letters—to her brother, to her best friend, to the president of the university who will not allow her to audit a class she desperately wants to take, to Joan Didion and Larry McMurtry to tell them what she thinks of their latest books, and to one person to whom she writes often yet never sends the letter.

Sybil expects her world to go on as it always has—a mother, grandmother, wife, divorcee, distinguished lawyer, she has lived a very full life. But when letters from someone in her past force her to examine one of the most painful periods of her life, she realizes that the letter she has been writing over the years needs to be read and that she cannot move forward until she finds it in her heart to offer forgiveness.

Sybil Van Antwerp’s life of letters might be “a very small thing,” but she also might be one of the most memorable characters you will ever read.

In the years leading up to the 1830s Indian Removal, a young Indigenous woman named Tayinaka flees with her newborn child–conceived through a brutal assault–across a ravaged Southern landscape. Haunted by loss and hunted by soldiers, she seeks refuge and survival. Separated from her cousin Innette in the chaos of soldiers’ attacks, Tayinaka must continue alone through a landscape scarred by violence and betrayal. She embarks on a dangerous journey to reach a promised boat to freedom, her newborn child bound to her chest. But along the way, the soldiers are waiting, and she is captured and subjected to the cruelty and racial hatred of the era. In a desperate escape attempt, she leaps from their steamship into the churning river below–plummeting into unexpected and mysterious consequences.

Blending historical fiction with speculative elements, The Way the Dust Clings is a powerful story of survival, cultural erasure, identity, and generational memory. As Tayinaka returns to the last place that brought her peace, she carries the sorrow of what was lost—and the hope that it might be reclaimed.