The Vanishing Half by Brit Bennett is a novel about the Vignes twins, who grow up together in the small (fictional) Southern Black town of Mallard, Louisiana, in which the residents of the town have been modifying the population to be lighter and lighter skinned with each passing generation. The two girls run away together at the age of 16 to New Orleans. Years later, one of the women returns to Mallard with a dark-skinned daughter, and the other disappears completely, severing the relationship with her sister and her family to live life as a white woman. Over the multiple decades from the 1950s to the 1990s, we check in with each of the women and their daughters and learn how they deal with the choices they’ve made. This is a brilliant and emotional story about racial passing and what we gain and lose with complete transformation. — Julie Travers