The story also examines the political climate in America during that era, weaving in stories of the fight for equal rights in different parts of the country while mostly focusing on life in Memphis. The novel has references to Black literature and music, frequently mentioning how representation in the media helps Black people’s lives and the way it gives hope to people.
The Two Lives of Sara is a prequel to West’s debut novel, Saving Ruby King, in which Sara was first introduced. There, she cares for the boarders, still hiding the past she tried to run away from in Chicago. Sara finds a home for herself in The Scarlet Poplar, a boardinghouse in Memphis. It is a novel of found family, of joy and heartbreak, and of fear to hope again. West doesn’t mince words, showing life in the 1960s with all the ugly parts, and interlacing beautiful parts of the story between the pain. Sara, the book’s narrator, is a young Black woman, keeping inside her a painful past and carrying her child with her to a new state, for a new life. The novel weaves through grief and oppression in a sharp and elegant way, graceful as it shows the life in 1960s Memphis, a time when the city was still segregated. In The Two Lives of Sara, Catherine Adel West relates the powerful story of a young single mother in Memphis while threading through Black history and freedom.
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