National Network for Equitable Library Service

Just as blue eyes or a birthmark may be passed down through the generations, so too are other, far less welcome traits, not all of them physical, but emotional. More in Anger is the poignant story of three generations of women and the emotional legacy that follows each of them throughout the years. In 1915, Opal King marries a man whose past steeped him in anger. Opal’s thwarted dreams, and her husband’s temper, reverberate and influence the life of their elder daughter Pearl. As a child, Pearl mistreats her younger sister, and as an adult woman she mistreats her husband and daughters too, even as she struggles to redeem herself. The youngest of these daughters, Vivien, strives to break free of the familiar pattern before she too passes the damage on to the next generation. The Mayfield family is a hothouse of human relationships; the forces at work are fierce and fragile, formative and destructive. A remarkable novel that explores the emotional and delicate relationships between mothers and daughters, J. Jill Robinson leads the readers up to and through the life of Vivien as she attempts to escape the family’s emotional inheritance.