
The story moves forth on the power of Ms. The author shows that good writing is like a fine bottle of wineit just gets better with time., Even the air is palpable in Tumbling. A gifted prose writer with a tremendous sense of place., As in any Diane McKinneyWhetstone novel, there is love in all of its many facets and dimensions. In evocative prose, she re-creates the world of 1940s and 1950s Philadelphia with passionate emotion in a moving novel of love, loss, redemption, and healing., McKinney-Whetstone's trademark poetic prose is still as sharp as it has always been…without sacrificing plot and pacing.… I couldn't be happier that McKinney-Whetstone has returned to show us all how it's done., A bouncy, moody, musical debut by an author who, like a good blues singer, is strong on style and interpretation. The result is a book that feels honest, filled with people you want to keep reading about., A compelling story. Offers up both wrenching and sweet truths that feel familiar to any reader, in a series of uncloying, unpredictable plotlines. Here conflicts escalate, lies collapse, and secrets begin to surface like dead men rising, past sins cannot be contained. Long ago, one "brother" committed an unthinkable act to protect the other, sparking a chain of events that now puts the Lazaretto on lockdown. As Sylvia races to save the victim, the fates of Meda's beloved orphans also converge on the Lazaretto. But the celebration is plunged into chaos when gunshots ring out across the river. The live-in staff are mostly black Philadelphians, and when two of them arrange to marry, the city's black community prepares for a party on its grounds. The Lazaretto is a crucible of life and death sick passengers and corpses are quarantined here, but this is also the place where immigrants take their first steps toward the American dream.

A devastated Meda dedicates herself to working in an orphanage and becomes a surrogate mother to two white boys while Sylvia, fueled by her guilt, throws herself into her nursing studies and finds a post at the Lazaretto, the country's first quarantine hospital, situated near the Delaware River, just south of Philadelphia. He has already arranged to take the baby, so it falls to Sylvia, the midwife's teenage apprentice, to tell Meda that her child is dead-a lie that will define the course of both women's lives. In a city riven by racial tension, the father's transgression is unforgivable. This stunning new novel from Diane McKinney-Whetstone, nationally bestselling author of Tumbling, begins in the chaotic backstreets of post-Civil War Philadelphia as a young black woman gives birth to a child fathered by her wealthy white employer.
