With her well-employed fiancé and a comfortable life in New York City, Crystelle has a life most young professionals would envy. She has come a long way from the rough Philadelphia neighborhood where she grew up. But she hasn’t left the past behind her. A ghost from her West Philly days continues to haunt her — the spirit of her high school sweetheart Jimmie, who she watched get gunned down one unforgettable night years ago.

Emotionally distraught from her unsettling memories and the suspicion she may be pregnant, Crystelle goes back to her old neighborhood to reconnect with friends and family. There, with the help of Jimmie’s mother, a woman who Crystelle loves like family — and who makes a prison visit to the young man who murdered her son — Crystelle can finally come to grips with her past, realizing the power of forgiveness and the need to move on.

A profound and intense story with deeply resonant depictions of urban African American life, Crystelle Mourning is a triumphant, lyrical beginning to a bright new talent in fiction.