AN AMERICAN MARRIAGE by Tayari Jones

A moving story that goes beyond love and looks at the hurdles a marriage should withstand and how incarceration changes relationships.

Roy and Celestial, newlyweds, are paying the price of yet another incident of injustice when Roy gets wrongfully sentenced to 12 years in prison. An event that will inevitably reshape their lives and their relationship.

The rest of the book is unveiling the exchange of letters between the young couple while Roy is locked up in prison. It’s interesting to see how the conversation starts off sweet and hopeful but it becomes more tense and infrequent as time goes by.

“A marriage is more than your heart, it's your life. And we are not sharing ours.”

I for one, would be the first one to believe in this romantic idea that you’ll wait forever for the person you love, but is it realistic? The author doesn’t seem to think so and I can see where she’s coming from.

The fact that their marriage doesn’t have a fairytale ending was a hurtful but logical wake up call that “love is not about symbolism, it's about individuals”.

There are a lot of angles to the story and it’s less about picking sides and more about what truly unfolds when the unthinkable happens to ordinary people.

“It was a wonderful feeling to be grown and yet young. To be married but not settled. To be tied down yet free.”