Book, Another Brooklyn, One[LS]

Augusta, an anthropologist graduated from a prestigious university, returns home for her father's funeral. Coincidentally, his academic research work focuses on funeral rituals from various cultures, an attempt to unravel the mystery of mourning and the almost infinite pain of loss. On a trip on the subway, she meets Sylvia, an old friend — and a cauldron of reminiscences starts to boil in her mind and warm her heart. Augusta's story begins in 1973, when at the age of eight she moves to Brooklyn — a multicultural enclave of New York with a dynamic African-American community and vast immigrant populations from across the globe. There, she discovers the power and comfort of female friendship, facing the transition from adolescence to adulthood. The meeting with her longtime friend sets her memory of the 1970s in motion, transporting her to a time and place where bonds of affection meant everything to her. A time when pop music played on the radio set the tone for emotional life, and TV programs illustrated, with psychedelic colors, the cultural landscape of children and teenagers. For Augusta and her three friends — Sylvia, Angela and Gigi —, who shared confidences as they walked the streets of the neighborhood, Brooklyn was a place where beautiful, talented, happy and bright girls seemed to see a bright future. But beneath the veneer of hope was another Brooklyn, a truly dangerous place where older men sought out girls in the dark hallways of public buildings, ghosts haunted at night, and mothers disappeared from one day to the next.