Pure Flame: A Legacy

"Rich and moving . . . Pure Flame may be Orange’s legacy. It is already her gift." —Maggie Doherty, The New York Times (Editors' Choice)

During one of the texting sessions that became our habit over the period I now think of as both late and early in our relationship, my mother revealed the existence of someone named Janis Jerome.

So begins Michelle Orange’s extraordinary inquiry into the meaning of maternal legacy—in her own family and across a century of seismic change. Jerome, she learns, ...