Silver Sparrow

Silver Sparrow, written by Tayari Jones and published in 2011, is a family drama set in 1980s Atlanta. The novel was a Women’s National Book Association 2011 Great Group Read and was chosen as one of the top 10 books of the year by Library Journal.

Plot Summary

Silver Sparrow revolves around Dana Lynn Yarboro and Chaurisse Witherspoon, who are half-sisters, although only Dana knows this.

Dana, 16, narrates the first half of the novel. Dana has grown up knowing that her father, James, had another wife and child when he married Gwen, her mother. Gwen was a giftwrap girl when James started pursuing her and paying for her coffee. After Gwen got pregnant, James was unwilling to divorce his first wife, and so they were married in another state.

As Dana Lynn grows, so does her awareness of James’s unusual role—James spends one day a week with her and her mother—and she realizes her place in James’s life is as his other daughter. She grows jealous of Chaurisse and the careless intimacy she has with James, and her curiosity leads her to seek out Chaurisse for a look, a chat, or a friendship. Dana engineers ways of encountering Chaurisse in various situations, and eventually, Dana comes to like her.

Chaurisse narrates the second part of the novel. Her mother, Laverne, was 14 when she went on a double date with James Witherspoon and his friend, Raleigh, that ended with her stumbling off to James’s bedroom.

The next time Laverne entered James’s bedroom, she was alone, pregnant, and recently married. A few decades into the future, Laverne can be found doling out advice and perms at her beauty shop, while bragging about her loving husband, James. She has grown to be clever and understanding and is beloved by her daughter, Chaurisse.

Chaurisse, who is less academically ambitious and less popular than Dana, is in awe of beautiful girls, such as the one she is caught shoplifting with one day at a drugstore. That other girl is Dana, and the two grow to be friends. Dana slowly invades Chaurisse’s life, while Chaurisse becomes increasingly aware of the inconsistencies in her own family life, and it appears the secret will soon come out. One day, gets a flat tire with Dana in the car; when she calls her father for help, the secret finally begins to come out.

Laverne, after finding out James has been cheating on her all these years, decides to stay with him. James abandons Dana, angry at her for letting his secret out. In the book’s Epilogue, Chaurisse and Dana meet up decades later. Dana has a young daughter whom she is determined to raise differently than her mother raised her.