Peace Adzo Medie

“Elikem married me in absentia; he did not come to our wedding.” Afi Tekple is a young seamstress whose life is narrowing rapidly. She lives in a small town in Ghana with her widowed mother, spending much of her time in her uncle Pious’s house with his many wives and children. Then one day she is offered a life-changing opportunity—a proposal of marriage from the wealthy family of Elikem Ganyo, a man she doesn’t truly know. She acquiesces, but soon realizes that Elikem is not quite the catch he seemed. He sends a stand-in to his own wedding, and only weeks after Afi is married and installed in a plush apartment in the capital city of Accra does she meet her new husband. It turns out that he is in love with another woman, whom his family disapproves of; Afi is supposed to win him back on their behalf. But it is Accra that eventually wins Afi’s heart and gives her a life of independence that she never could have imagined for herself. A brilliant scholar and a fierce advocate for women’s rights, author Peace Adzo Medie infuses her debut novel with intelligence and humor. For readers of Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie and Candice Carty-Williams, His Only Wife is the story of an indomitable and relatable heroine that illuminates what it means to be a woman in a rapidly changing world.

Author of Reese’s Book Club Pick His Only Wife, Peace Adzo Medie returns with a moving novel about the unbreakable power of female friendship.  After two inseparable young friends in Ghana become estranged, one moving to the U.S., only a crisis can bring them back together and reconnect their bond. When Selasi and Akorfa were young girls, they were more than just cousins; they were inseparable, they would do anything for each other, they implored their parents to let them be together, and there was no one else who each confided in. Then Selasi begins to change and become hostile and quiet; her grades suffer, she loses interest in everything, and she begins to build a space around herself, shutting Akorfa out. It will be years before Akorfa learns what has happened, and in the intervening years, the two will become estranged. Only a crisis can ultimately bring them back together. A riveting depiction of life, class, and family in Ghana, an eye-opening story of life as an African-born woman in the U.S., and an assured follow-up to a much-heralded debut, Nightbloom is above all an accessible and powerful novel attesting to the strength of female bonds in the face of societies that would silence them.