We Are The Kings: A Novel

by Ariane Torres

Stuck in a relationship that appears to be going nowhere and recently unemployed, Marcella learns of the death of her grandmother Adele. Adele’s body has been found not far from her late husband’s grave, by a man she’d been involved with as a young woman, a relationship that Marcella and her family had previously known nothing about. As the family attempts to understand Adele, a woman they thought they knew, snapshots of their own lives come to light, of Marcella’s maternal grandmother’s upbringing in post-war New York as a Jewish immigrant, of the cultural upheaval of the 1960s, of experiences of marriage and motherhood spanning decades. Interwoven throughout their narratives is the presence of a ghost: a woman, maybe even an idea. As Marcella sorts through the mystery that has haunted her family for generations, she puts into words what no one else will say out loud, revealing not only what may or may not have happened, but what’s truly at stake when a woman tells her story.