And in every life, forty is the age when I start losing things-memories, glasses, friends-the frequency of their deaths make dying pedestrian. I was forty years old when First Husband died the first time.

And for my own sake, I don’t remember the faces of those who took their breath anymore. “ ’Cause no one’s that unlucky.” So now, when people ask how my husbands died, I say they stopped breathing. In fact, the word “unlucky” would only be used by those who thought I had something to do with it. It used to scare people when I’d let down my guard and confess that my husbands were murdered. We’re all on the verge of somebody else’s violence. My first husband is who I remember most.įirst Husband was once born in 1948 and was murdered just like my third, but I wasn’t surprised. I’ve been married six times, all of them men, all of them taken from me, by God or by man, death in all cases. Since I married a man, no one asks the kind of person I choose anymore. My name is Sarah Shipley and I’ve slept with five women. An excerpt, followed by a Q&A with the author and AFLW Associate Editor Danielle Broadway about the novel’s runaway success, reader reactions and events in conversation.

Deon’s coming-of-age speculative fiction book, which recently garnered a NAACP Image Award nomination, delves into Los Angeles history, racism, sexism, fantasy and humanity. Natashia Deón’s second novel, THE PERISHING, is a love letter to time, space and the transformative stories of Black women.

The Perishing by Natashia Deón