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In this crackling portrayal of friendship in peril, a young woman's world is upended when a tragedy in her best friend's life tests the boundaries of their sisterhood—a sharp and compelling debut novel from a Ghanaian-American writer.
Dzifa has always felt a bit off. Maybe it's the family baggage, or maybe it's just how she's wired; she craves sanctuary, a soft place to land, but struggles to find it in her personal or professional life. Depleted by cycles of burnout and a state of perpetual bracing, she's the polar opposite of her magnetic best friend, Tatiana, who has everything Dzifa never did: unconditional love, unshakeable confidence, and a knack for bending every circumstance to her favor–even an unexpected pregnancy. Yet despite their differences, they share a skepticism of the respectability politics that they've been taught should organize their lives.
Just as they each begin to find their footing, the sudden passing of Tatiana's child upends everything. Dzifa rushes cross-country to help her friend prepare for the funeral, but when she arrives, she encounters family dynamics complex enough to rival her own messy origins. With Tatiana's problematic in-laws seeding doubts about her capacity as a mother, Dzifa fears for her own capacity–to stand up for her best friend, and to stand up for herself. When Tatiana asks her for the ultimate favor, Dzifa must choose between loyalty at the expense of her own wellbeing, or authenticity at the expense of her most valued friendship.
A riveting exploration of sisterhood, what it means to mother and be mothered, and what it means to be well, Somewhere Soft to Land reckons with the sometimes funny, sometimes fraught, friendship between women with divergent ideologies, aspirations, personalities, and paths.
"Incisive debut... alonté does an excellent job illustrating the characters' grief in the wake of tragedy, along with Dzifa's heartfelt desire to support her friend. This will move readers." —Publishers Weekly
"This bracing first novel is an intimate and impassioned exploration of friendship, resilience, and the uneasy balance between loyalty and self-preservation...alonté skillfully balances moments of quiet humor with a searing portrayal of love, grief, and respectability politics in Black women's lives. Most striking is alonté's tender yet incisive prose, rendering Dzifa's search for belonging and authenticity deeply recognizable. This is a powerful debut that lingers well beyond its final page." —Booklist
"From rage to indifference to the illusory hope for reunification, alonté takes readers through the life cycle of toxic families with visceral realness, humanizing zillennials who are estranged not just from their families but also from their pasts as a whole." —Library Journal
This information about Somewhere Soft to Land was first featured
in "The BookBrowse Review" - BookBrowse's membership magazine, and in our weekly "Publishing This Week" newsletter. Publication information is for the USA, and (unless stated otherwise) represents the first print edition. The reviews are necessarily limited to those that were available to us ahead of publication. If you are the publisher or author and feel that they do not properly reflect the range of media opinion now available, send us a message with the mainstream reviews that you would like to see added.
Any "Author Information" displayed below reflects the author's biography at the time this particular book was published.
Kai alonté is a Ghanaian-American writer and visual artist based in Northern Europe. Her short story '3-Step Face Mask' was published in the Sycamore Review in 2021 and won 1st Prize for Nonfiction in the 2020 West Virginia Writers Contest. In 2024, her essay 'Embracing Life's Layers through Collage' was published in Onko Maailma Valmis?, an essay collection organized by the Finnish disability advocacy organization Kulttuuria kaikille (Culture for All). She graduated from Trinity College Dublin's Creative Writing M.Phil program in 2021 and has been an artist-in-residence at Gullkistan, NES, Arteles, and Hub Feenix.
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