Kit de Waal, the award-winning author of MY NAME IS LEON, delivers her breakthrough hit with the emotionally taut, irreverently funny and deeply tender SWEET PEA.

The year is 1972, and 29-year-old Paulette is on the cusp of having it all. An auxiliary nurse, she has a good career, her own home, and the devotion of her devilishly handsome boyfriend, Denton. A contract construction worker whose jobs drag him to the farthest corners of the country and beyond, Denton spends long nights dreaming with Paulette about the house they’ll buy, the babies they’ll make, and the soft touch and delicious cooking he'll have the honor of coming home to every day. And if he’s often unavailable to meet her friends, attend work happy hours, or spend more than a few days with her, she can ignore all of that. She knows he’s working long hours building toward their dream. (Yes, your Spidey senses are tingling!)

Paulette begs Denton to move in with her so they can really begin to save and live together as the husband and wife they hope to be someday. But he explains that he prefers keeping his shabby room with his best friend, Garfield, and that it’s better for Paulette and their relationship if he keeps a womanizer like Garfield at bay. Of course, this is something of a projection on Denton’s part.

"Perfect for fans of Ann Patchett, Terah Shelton Harris, and book club hits like PINEAPPLE STREET, SWEET PEA is sure to be an instant classic of love, redemption and hope."

One day, Garfield arrives on Paulette’s doorstep with unthinkable news: Denton has died in a car crash. Paulette cannot see him at the hospital, the morgue or the funeral. That would be disruptive to the wife and three children he left behind, the ones who really get to mourn him. But, Paulette thinks, they only lost the man they knew, whereas she lost him and her dreams --- not to mention the years she spent pining after someone who didn’t love her and wasting her good baby-making years. Grief meets the bottle meets the open arms of Garfield, and before she knows it, Paulette has her baby. 

Garfield proves to be an attentive and doting partner and father, but Paulette cannot let go of her grief at losing Denton. When she learns that the man who hit Denton, stripping her of her one true love and all the babies she was meant to have, lives in her own neighborhood, she becomes consumed with thoughts of rage and anxiety. Frank Bowen is aging and pathetic, droopy and morose, and not at all taking advantage of the life he has left to live. But even his dour presence serves as a constant reminder of Denton. 

Although Paulette loves her perfect, beautiful son, Bird, he alone is not enough to bridge the gap between her and Garfield. Eventually, Garfield can bear it no longer and leaves. Her love for Denton and pseudo-love for Garfield are replaced with a pure, endless devotion to Bird…and a new fascination: Cornelius “Nellie” Bowen, the grandson of the man who killed Denton and, it would appear, his own daughter in the wreck.

Paulette is drawn to the grief and agony she senses within Frank, but even more so to poor Nellie, who is being raised by a dowdy old grandfather with no mother figure in sight. Before long, she essentially has adopted the boy, inviting him over for weekly playdates with Bird. There is no comparison to the love that Paulette has for her own son. But in Nellie, she sees something of herself too, someone to whom fate has not been kind but who still longs to belong to something and to someone. 

Adding to the complex love she feels for Nellie is the racial aspect: Paulette and her son are Black, whereas Nellie and his grandfather are white. Though this presents no issue for either family, as the boys turn into rowdy teenagers, questions of agency, persecution and racism come increasingly into play. But it is not until Bird starts clinging to Garfield and his family, leaving Paulette and Nellie to each other, that her true capacity for love is tested, expanded and transformed.

Throughout the narrative, Kit de Waal unpacks vivid, poignant scenes from Paulette’s young life and arrival in England, which occurred at the behest of a grandmother in desperate need of work and a new beginning. Early on, Paulette was bullied for her accent, learning that it was better to be silent, pretty but not too pretty, and smart but not too smart. When her grandmother returns to the Caribbean when Paulette is only 21, she kickstarts an emotional quest for belonging. This begins to explain and clarify why she is drawn to Nellie, despite the disastrous and tragic nature of their first meeting.

You will often grit your teeth and shake your head at Paulette’s blind devotion to devious Denton, her doomed-to-fail dalliance with Garfield, and maybe even the way she spoils her beloved Bird. But so too will you laugh with and at her, raise your glass of rum with her, and delight in the everyday acts of kindness that fill her life with joy and community. 

The humor continues with Paulette’s neighbor and best friend, Maggie, a throaty Irish broad whose ability to deliver harsh truths in witticisms provides some of the book’s biggest laughs. (Among my favorites: “I’ve seen what drink can do to a face, so don’t start using rum as face cream” and “Men treat women like rafts in the ocean. You don’t let go of one until you’ve got your arm around another.”) Paired with the emotional resonance and complexity of Paulette’s character development and de Waal’s luminous, lucid prose, these moments of levity hark back to the novel’s true thesis: that the love we extend into the world will always return to us, even if from the most unlikely and unexpected places.

Perfect for fans of Ann Patchett, Terah Shelton Harris, and book club hits like PINEAPPLE STREET, SWEET PEA is sure to be an instant classic of love, redemption and hope.