Dazzling

Emelumadu debuts with an entrancing tale of two Nigerian girls whose fates are intertwined in Igbo myth and magic. While preteen Ozoemena is at her uncle’s funeral, a mysterious boy touches her back, causing a burning sensation and leaving a welt. Her paternal grandmother tells her she was touched by the ghost of her dead uncle, who was able to change into a leopard when he was alive, and that he’s chosen Ozoemena to carry on the family’s tradition of becoming the leopard to fight injustice. Her mother, however, believes the myth is a sign of madness, and sends Ozoemena to a boarding school to protect her from her grandmother’s influence. A parallel narrative follows Treasure, who’s grieving the death of her father and is haunted by a spirit who wants to make her his wife. Treasure resists, although she agrees to procure three other girls to marry the spirit’s dead friends in exchange for freeing her father from someone called the “Bone Woman.” When Ozoemena learns from her sojourns in the spirit world that the girls were taken from her school, she has an opportunity to use her power as the leopard. Emelumadu’s account of boarding school life feels a bit rote, with pages dedicated to the minutiae of students’ social alliances, but she makes up for it with exhilarating depictions of the spirits. Emelumadu delivers the goods with her satisfying coming-of-age story. Agent: Hillary Jacobson, CAA. (Dec.)