Cary weaves complex tale of family, migration

With her latest work, Cary does not stray from the theme that first garnered her fame; instead, she holds fast and delves further. The result is a multilayered, complex, and engaging tale of love, social injustice, and migrations - both physical and emotional.

Between the 1920s and 1960s, millions of African Americans migrated from the South to all points north and west. Today, however, census records show that the number of African Americans moving back south is climbing steadily every year.

This is one of the subplots of If Sons, Then Heirs.

Having chosen to tell this particular tale, Cary may have unwittingly set in motion what is sure to be a wave of reverse-migration literature.

At the start of the novel, Alonzo "Lonnie" Rayne, a young African American building contractor in Philadelphia, is heading down to Beaufort County, S.C., to spend Easter week with his great-grandmother, Nana Selma. Accompanying him is Kahlil, the 7-year-old son of his live-in girlfriend, Lillie.

Rayne was just the same age when his mother, Jewell, placed him on a train headed south to spend the summer with Selma and his grandfather, Bobo. Decades would pass before mother and son saw each other again.

At the time, Jewell was young, overwhelmed, and underequipped to be a parent. Often mistaken for white, Jewell met and married a white lawyer and then effortlessly and effectively slipped over the color line to live for decades as a white woman. But now, following her husband's illness, Jewell's maternal instincts are reignited, and she is longing to reconnect with the son she abandoned 20-odd years earlier. Filled with apologies and explanations, she arrives at Rayne's home on the very day that he is headed down to South Carolina to visit with Selma.

Rayne arrives to find a physically frail but mentally alert Nana. The family homestead, made up of several acres of land, has fallen into disrepair.