Black Cake: A Novel

"Do any of us really know our parents? I kept returning to this question as I read this novel about Eleanor Bennett, a Caribbean-born woman whose secrets bring her two estranged children together only after her death. In a recording made for them, Bennett reveals who she is: a runaway bride, an open-water swimmer, a member of Britain’s Windrush generation – all before she married their father. Black Cake unspools over decades and countries and ultimately is the story of a mother’s final gift to the adult children she loved more than anything else in the world."