Novels About Inheritance: Background information when reading Housebreaking

Novels About Inheritance

This article relates to Housebreaking

In Housebreaking by Colleen Hubbard, protagonist Del finds herself in the position of having inherited her family's home and being tasked with what to do with it. Inheritance, whether of a home, money, information or an object of unique value, has long proven to be a fertile plot point in fiction. The revelation of an inheritance can spark jealousies among family members, unearth buried secrets or put a wayward character in an uncharacteristic place of responsibility, as in Del's case. Below are some other novels featuring an inheritance of some kind for you to explore.

The promise of an inheritance drives the main action in Vanessa Veselka's The Great Offshore Grounds, in which half sisters Cheyenne and Livy mean to claim a monetary gift from their estranged father, only to be faced with a shocking family secret instead. This scenario sends them off on a complicated journey searching for answers.

Family Trust by Kathy Wang follows the Silicon Valley-based family of Stanley Huang, whose self-proclaimed wealth and recent diagnosis of pancreatic cancer raises questions about who will inherit what. Stanley's impending death is captured alongside the current problems and preoccupations of his children, wife and ex-wife, and prompts an examination of their desires and values in life.

Charmaine Wilkerson's debut novel Black Cake features a strange inheritance for brother and sister Byron and Benny: Their mother has left them a Caribbean black cake and a mysterious recording that soon reveals secrets challenging what they thought they knew of her and themselves. A Hulu drama series based on Black Cake is currently in production.

Maaza Mengiste's Booker-nominated The Shadow King follows Hirut, a servant-turned-fighter in the 1930s Italian invasion of Ethiopia. Hirut's most prized possession is a rifle she inherited from her father, a Wujigra (the Ethiopian term for the Fusil Gras French service rifle). Her story reflects the significance of guns in Ethiopian culture due to their important role in maintaining independence.

In Great House by Nicole Krauss, Nadia, a novelist, writes at a large antique desk with numerous drawers that she inherited 25 years ago from a Chilean poet who was murdered by Pinochet's police. One day a girl calls to claim the desk, saying that she is the poet's daughter. These characters and several others are all linked by the desk, a unique point of contact between their overlapping lives.

Jocelyn Nicole Johnson's My Monticello explores the concept of inheritance from the point of view of Da'Naisha, a descendant of Thomas Jefferson and Sally Hemings. Caught in a white supremacist militia uprising, Da'Naisha takes up residence at Jefferson's estate, Monticello, along with neighbors and loved ones. Johnson's narrative raises questions about the legacy of slavery in the United States and what is owed to descendants of enslaved people.

Danielle Trussoni's The Ancestor centers on the surprise inheritance of Alberta "Bert" Monte, who learns that she has been left, among other windfalls, a castle in Italy. This event leads her to explore her family history, which includes some dark truths, resulting in a modern gothic tale that incorporates elements of science and genealogy.

Filed under Reading Lists

This article relates to Housebreaking. It first ran in the April 20, 2022 issue of BookBrowse Recommends.

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