She Would Be King

Set early in Liberia's history, Wayétu Moore's debut novel uses magical realism to follow three people with superhuman gifts. Red-haired Gbessa is cursed at birth in the West African village of Lai, cast out as a suspected witch and left for dead after a viper bite, yet survives. On a Virginia plantation, June Dey, born into slavery, keeps his unusual strength hidden until a confrontation drives him to run. And in Jamaica's Blue Mountains, Norman Aragon, son of a Maroon slave and a white British colonizer, can fade from sight as his mother could. Moore is a Liberian-American author, and the novel was named a best book of its year by Publishers Weekly and Booklist.

Sarah Jessica Parker chose it as one of her picks for the American Library Association's Book Club Central.