Naima Coster’s first novel, HALSEY STREET, was a thoughtful and deeply personal exploration of the effects of urban gentrification on a family and a community. Now, in her sophomore effort, WHAT’S MINE AND YOURS, she tackles another divisive social issue ---  this time in an ambitious, even epic, novel set in North Carolina.

The book opens with a harrowing chapter set in 1992, in which a young boy, Gee, witnesses the murder of his stepfather, Ray, a good man and aspiring entrepreneur who has helped provide stability for Gee and his mother, Jade. We also are introduced to Ray’s friend, Robbie Ventura, the son of Colombian immigrants and a new homeowner on the city’s predominantly white west side.

"[Coster] excels at developing complex characters and depicting their interior lives, as well as exploring the complicated ways in which social pressures and personal relationships and dynamics are entangled."

From this shocking opener, Coster travels forward in time, alternating between two pivotal moments in her characters’ lives. In 2006, Gee, now a teenager, is one of the east side students selected to be bussed to a predominantly white high school on the west side, to help integrate the schools in this racially divided city. There he meets Noelle, the oldest daughter of Robbie and his ex-wife, Lacey May. Noelle and her sisters, Margarita and Diane, can pass as white, and Lacey May prefers to keep it that way --- she’s gotten involved in the ugly campaign to keep the newcomers out of her daughters’ school. Despite her mother’s vitriol, Noelle befriends Gee and encourages him to get involved in the Shakespeare play she’s stage-managing.

Twelve years later, Noelle and her sisters have been called back to North Carolina after learning that their mother has a brain tumor and likely (according to Lacey May) doesn’t have long to live. The three young women are in very different places in their lives, and all of them are hiding secrets from one another, secrets that in some ways tie back to things that happened when they were younger. Margarita (known professionally as Margot) is an Instagram influencer and aspiring actress whose financial circumstances are very precarious; Diane is in a long-term relationship with her girlfriend but is hesitant to come out to her family. As for Noelle, she’s struggling with the emotional aftermath of a miscarriage, while feeling increasingly distant from her philandering husband, Nelson.

If this sounds like a lot of different narrative strands, you’re right --- and at times, the shifts between characters and chronologies can feel disjointed and confusing. Coster takes an ambitious approach, and it doesn’t always feel like the narrative hangs together as a cohesive novel. Nevertheless, the promise she exhibited in her debut is still on display here. She excels at developing complex characters and depicting their interior lives, as well as exploring the complicated ways in which social pressures and personal relationships and dynamics are entangled.

Nearly any one of Coster’s chapters could stand on its own as a character study or short story. Readers will gain both insight and empathy from spending time with her well-realized characters on their interrelated journeys.