The Color of Family

McGill (Bed Stuy) compresses a fraught epic about a wealthy Black family into a compact and underdeveloped mosaic. Harold Payne, a successful magazine editor, lives with his wife, Camille, in Connecticut with their six children as well as two children Harold had with a French mistress. One of his sons, 15-year-old Devon, drives drunk, kills a young woman, and emerges with a quadriplegic injury. While Devon is in a fancy rehabilitation center in California (where he sells cocaine), his girlfriend, Gina, carries on a secret relationship with Devon’s older brother James, who escaped the car wreck uninjured to become a college football sensation. Chapters check in on the family over the following decades: Camille begs Devon to be tested as a kidney donor for an ill James, Harold has a stroke, Michel (one of the two French children) finds himself on the cusp of both fatherhood and rap success, and Devon, having flunked out of UCLA film school, faces prison for drug running. The shifting perspectives give contours to the sprawling family and its painful secrets, but the structure sacrifices depth for breadth. This novel of personal tragedies, bad decisions, and secrets doesn’t quite live up to its dreams. Agent: Priya Doraswamy, Lotus Lane Literary. (Jan.)