Restoration Heights

Medearis’s smart and evocative debut follows the gentrification of Brooklyn’s Bedford-Stuyvesant neighborhood. At the heart of the story is frustrated white artist Reddick, who makes a living hanging fine art in rich people’s homes and regularly shows off dexterous moves on neighborhood basketball courts. One day, Reddick has a chance encounter in his neighborhood with an inebriated Hannah Granger, who makes a pass at him, which he declines. It turns out that Hannah, who goes missing after they meet, is the fiancée of the son of the überwealthy Seward family, the same family for whom Reddick just installed art pieces from their vaunted collection. That Mrs. Leland, one of the Seward’s snooty neighbors, pays Reddick to investigate Hannah’s disappearance strains credibility. Nevertheless, Reddick follows leads that tie into Restoration Heights, a failed new housing development in Bed-Stuy, where he finds out the truth behind Hannah’s disappearance. He tracks his progress on a whiteboard that—with its carefully laid out names, circles, arrows, crossing lines, erasures, and notations—is as much a piece of art as it is an investigative tool. Medearis’s novel adeptly explores white privilege, racism, the demands of creating art, and how members of all socioeconomic classes close ranks when it comes to protecting their own. (Jan.)