Excerpt from We Deserve Monuments by Jas Hammonds, plus links to reviews, author biography & more

"No point in getting too comfortable, right?" I asked.

She looked around the room, eyes softening when they landed on the bookcases. She pulled a tall, skinny book from the shelf and joined me on the bed. She smelled like she always did—jojoba oil, vanilla, summertime. It was nice to have this small, familiar thing when everything else felt off-center.

"I'm surprised you haven't uncovered this yet," she said, leafing through the pages.

"What is it?"

She showed me the forest-green cover. Bardell High School Yearbook, 1984–1985 was etched in silver block letters.

"Baby Mom!" I examined the senior class pages, hunting for Mom's perfect white smile and almond-brown eyes. After mistakenly searching for Zora Anderson, I found her under the Hs—Zora Rayla Harding. Over thirty years later, and she still looked the same. I traced her maiden name with my index finger. "It's so weird to see you with a different last name."

"What was weird was changing it when I married your dad. I was a Harding longer than I've been an Anderson, you know."

I turned the page, giggling at the hairstyles of decades past. "Is Ms. Carole in here?"

Mom didn't say anything as she flipped to the Ts. Carole Judith Thompson beamed proudly in the center of the page.

"I don't remember her from when we visited last time," I said.

"You were only five."

I thought about hazy string lights and shiny gold presents. "Did we come around Christmas?"

Excerpted from We Deserve Monuments by Jas Hammonds. Copyright © 2022 by Jas Hammonds. Excerpted by permission of Roaring Brook Press. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.