An American Marriage by Tayari Jones was published by Algonquin Books in 2018. It became a bestseller, was chosen for Oprah's Book Club, and won the Women's Prize for Fiction in 2019. Jones, an Atlanta-born novelist whose earlier books include Leaving Atlanta and Silver Sparrow, has spoken widely about its themes: race, marriage and incarceration.
The story
Celestial and Roy are newlyweds in Atlanta, ambitious and upwardly mobile. Early in their marriage Roy is arrested and convicted of a crime his wife knows he did not commit, and sentenced to twelve years in prison. The novel is told largely through their letters and alternating voices, and through the voice of Andre, a childhood friend of Celestial's who becomes central to her life during Roy's absence. When Roy's conviction is overturned after five years and he comes home, all three must decide what they owe each other.
What it says about justice
The novel does not dwell on courtroom procedure. Its subject is what a wrongful conviction does to the people around the accused, and to the accused himself: the lost years, the strain on love and loyalty, the way prison changes a person even when the state admits it was wrong. Jones has said she was interested in how mass incarceration affects Black families in particular, and in the ordinary aspirations it interrupts.
Why it resonates
Wrongful convictions are a documented problem. In the United States, the National Registry of Exonerations has recorded thousands of cases since 1989, and Black Americans are disproportionately represented among those exonerated. Projects that work to overturn wrongful convictions often describe the same aftermath the novel explores: release does not restore what was lost.
Reading it alongside
Pair it with Bryan Stevenson's Just Mercy, a non-fiction account of representing wrongly convicted people, which appears in our list of 11 books on justice, law and the Troubles.