What the Fireflies Knew

Similar to Jesmyn Ward's Salvage the Bones and Sue Monk Kidd's The Secret Life of Bees, this coming-of-age story follows eleven-year-old KB and her sister as they attempt to adjust to their new life with their estranged grandfather following the death of their father and the disappearance of their mother over the course of a summer.

Kenyatta Bernice (KB) is nearly eleven years old. Her overburdened mother sends her and her adolescent sister Nia to live with their estranged grandpa in Lansing when her father overdoses and leaves the family's Detroit house unpaid.

Over the course of one hot summer, KB tries to find her way around a world that has completely changed: a father who is called a fiend; a mother whose smile no longer reaches her eyes; a sister who used to be her best friend but has now entered adolescence and is suddenly unwilling to interact with her; a silent and grumpy grandfather; and the occasionally friendly white kids across the street. They are all also concealing information.

Steering between bitterness, desertion, and isolation, KB is compelled to forge a new identity and discover her own voice. While certain realities sting deep, she discovers as she sorts through the broken parts of her newly broken world that a new life—and a new KB—can be fashioned from them.

Harris's prose masterfully captures the vulnerability, perceptiveness, and curious nature of a young Black girl on the verge of puberty. This hazy period between childhood and adolescence is when everything that was once familiar takes on a strange veneer when viewed through older, more mature eyes. What the Fireflies Knew beautifully captures that painful but essential part of growing up: the realisation that loved ones can be flawed, sometimes significantly so, and that the ideal family we all dream of looks different up close. This is revealed through KB's disillusionment and subsequent discovery of her own power.