Transcendent Kingdom Author:Yaa Gyasi A portrait of a Ghanaian family, living in Alabama, ravaged by depression, addiction, and grief... Gifty is a fifth-year candidate in neuroscience at Stanford School of Medicine studying reward-seeking behavior in mice and the neural circuits of depression and addiction. Her brother, Nana, was a gifted high school athle... more »te who died of a heroin overdose after a knee injury left him hooked on OxyContin.
Her suicidal mother is living in her bed.
And Gifty is determined to discover the scientific basis for the suffering she sees all around her.
But even as she turns to the hard sciences to unlock the mystery of her family's loss, she finds herself hungering for her childhood faith and grappling with the evangelical church in which she was raised, whose promise of salvation remains as tantalizing as it is elusive.« less