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Book Reviewed by:A modern-day story of family, loss, and renewal, Halsey Street captures the deeply human need to belong - not only to a place but to one another.
Penelope Grand has scrapped her failed career as an artist in Pittsburgh and moved back to Brooklyn to keep an eye on her ailing father. She's accepted that her future won't be what she'd dreamed, but now, as gentrification has completely reshaped her old neighborhood, even her past is unrecognizable. Old haunts have been razed, and wealthy white strangers have replaced every familiar face in Bed-Stuy. Even her mother, Mirella, has abandoned the family to reclaim her roots in the Dominican Republic. That took courage. It's also unforgivable.
When Penelope moves into the attic apartment of the affluent Harpers, she thinks she's found a semblance of family - and maybe even love. But her world is upended again when she receives a postcard from Mirella asking for reconciliation. As old wounds are reopened, and secrets revealed, a journey across an ocean of sacrifice and self-discovery begins.
An engrossing debut, Halsey Street shifts between the perspectives of these two captivating, troubled women. Mirella has one last chance to win back the heart of the daughter she'd lost long before leaving New York, and for Penelope, it's time to break free of the hold of the past and start navigating her own life.
What are you reading this week? And what did you think of last week’s books? (1/29/2026)
...n". Then I read How to Read a Book by Monica Wood. It is a wonderful story of second chances and forgiveness. I highly recommend it. Today I finished Halsey Street by Naima Coster. This is a new book and a debut for the author. I enjoyed the story. It reminded me of William Boyle's Saint of the Narrow Street because both focuse...
-Lynne_G
Naima Coster is the kind of writer who inhales and exhales the setting of her novels, shaping their personality with descriptive prose of streets, living spaces, bars, eateries, both sides of the sky. When the story moves to the Dominican Republic, if you close your eyes tight, you can almost inhale the scent of the tangy rice dish arroz con gandules. Or the papayas roasting in the Dominican sun. At its heart, Halsey Street is about women and intimacy. The myth of mother-daughter perfection is what Coster shatters, leaving nothing to interpretation. Penelope hates her mother for leaving her father. She says to her mother, "You are nothing to me. As far as I'm concerned, you're already dead." Samantha Harper has a passive relationship with her young daughter Grace, always working, rarely at home, expecting Penelope to babysit without even asking and then taking umbrage when Penelope befriends motherless Grace...continued
Full Review
(990 words)
(Reviewed by Valerie Morales).
Angie Cruz, author of Soledad and Let It Rain Coffee
Coster's absorbing and beautifully written novel Halsey Street haunts me still. Set in two cities I love, Pittsburgh and New York, it's both lucidly familiar and emotionally unpredictable. It's a novel that faces head-on the complicated ways women are split between their duty to their families and their personal passions. In this deeply profound and moving story, Penelope es tremenda! Ben Marcus, author of Leaving the Sea and The Flame Alphabet
[A] poignant, moving book, written with deep empathy and sophistication. Christina Baker Kline, New York Times bestselling author of Orphan Train and Piece of the World
In this lovely novel, Naima Coster captures, with depth and nuance, the yearnings, ambivalence, and insecurities of a woman on the brink of adulthood...An exceptional debut that explores how to find meaning within the shifting emotions and tangled webs of connection. John Crowley, author of Ka and Little, Big
Naima Coster's first novel is rich and flavorsome, a portrait of a Brooklyn neighborhood in decline and renewal, and of a young woman - a risk-taker, fierce and yet loving. First novels rarely come as skilled, touching, and real as Halsey Street.
Quite a few years ago my mother and I drove to Chicago for a wedding she was hired to officiate; she is an Episcopal priest. It was a four-hour road trip with most of it laughing and joking and singing to old school R&B (hip-hop horrifies my mother). But I noticed a change in her as we entered Chicago. Her face suddenly lost its color. Her jaws narrowed and her eyes were glass. Her grip on the steering wheel was akin to holding onto a life raft to stay alive. "What is wrong?" I asked. She took a deep breath, turned to me, and said, "I hate Chicago."
Was she transferring the rage of her father into this present space? He was denied employment in Chicago because they didn't hire black engineers at the time. Was she referring to the ...
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