Indies Introduce

Fiction

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  Last Summer on State Street, Toya Wolfe
  William Morrow, 9780063209749, June 14, 2022 (Fiction)
  

  “Last Summer on State Street will knock your socks off. A coming-of-age story in which the setting is as much of a character as Fe Fe, our twelve year old protagonist. The reader will be with Fe Fe the summer of 1999 as she tries to manage life in building 4950 of Chicago’s Robert Taylor Homes. This debut novel will stay with you long after you finish the last page. Well done, Toya Wolfe. Bravo.”

  - Anne Frey, Watermark Books & Cafe, Wichita, KS
  
  

  “Toya Wolfe’s Last Summer on State Street is alive with the sights and sounds of 1990s Chicago as four Black girls strike up a delicate friendship over a summertime game of double dutch. Tensions flare as they navigate power struggles between rival gangs, family expectations, and their own conflicting loyalties and ambitions.”

  Jhoanna Belfer, Bel Canto Books, Long Beach, CA
  

  “This coming-of-age story is an intimate portrait of inner-city life told from the perspective of four girls whose home in the projects is scheduled to be demolished. This is not a book you can read passively — their struggles become your struggles. Can a story relay both tragedy and triumph? Wolfe demonstrates that it can.”

  - Destinee Hodge, East City Bookshop, Washington, DC

   

  “Thoroughly smashes your heart into a million pieces. Such a powerful novel with a smart, earnest young narrator.”

   

  Stacey Morin-Wilson, Porter Square Books, Cambridge, MA