We Rip the World Apart

Summary

A SWEEPING MULTI-GENERATIONAL STORY ABOUT MOTHERHOOD, RACE, AND SECRETS IN THE LIVES OF THREE WOMEN.

When twenty-four-year-old Kareela discovers she’s pregnant with a child she isn’t sure she wants, her struggle to understand her place in the world as a woman who is half Black and half white—yet feels neither—is amplified.

Her mother, Evelyn, fled to Canada with her husband and their firstborn child during the politically charged Jamaican exodus of the 1980s, only to realize they’d come to a place where Black men are viewed with suspicion—a constant and pernicious reality Evelyn watches her husband and son navigate daily.

Years later, in the aftermath of her son’s murder by the police, Evelyn’s mother-in-law, Violet, moves in, offering young Kareela a link to the Jamaican heritage she has never fully known. Despite Violet’s efforts to help them through their grief, the traumas they carry grow into a web of secrets that threatens the very family they all hold so dear.

In the present day, Kareela, prompted by fear and uncertainty about the new life she carries, must come to terms with the mysteries surrounding her family’s past and the need to make sense of both her identity and her future.

Weaving the women’s stories across multiple timelines, We Rip the World Apart reveals the ways that simple choices, made in the heat of the moment and with the best of intentions, can have deep and lasting repercussions—especially when people remain silent.