Departure Story

Book excerpt: Departure Story is a coming-of-age novel about a young Guyanese girl named Celestine who wins a scholarship to study at a small liberal arts school in middle America, leaving her broken, dysfunctional family behind. In the midst of an awkward adjustment period, she receives news that her uncle, a notable Guyanese politician, has been shot dead in an act of political violence. Feeling lost in a state of grief, Celestine decides to join the Student Council Diversity Committee, hoping to learn more about the democratic values that her home country's government has been modeled after. She takes up the cause of trying to save an African dance group on campus that is soon to lose its instructor. Tired of going by the book and being ignored, Celestine takes matters into her own hands, ruffling the feathers of the powers that be on campus and alienating so-called friends in the process, all while dealing with her first love, her first heartbreak, and investigating a family secret that she might not actually want to know.