Jump at the Sun: A Novel [Hardcover]

Kim McLarin (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: July 3, 2006

After a series of stressful personal transitions, Grace Jefferson finds herself in a new house in a new city and in a new career for which she feels dangerously unsuited: a stay-at-home mom. An educated and accomplished modern woman, a child of the Civil Rights dream, she is caught between the only two models of mothering she has ever known—a sharecropping grandmother who abandoned her children to save herself and a mother who sacrificed all to save her kids—as she struggles to find a middle ground. But as the days pass and the pressures mount, Grace begins to catch herself in small acts of abandonment that she fears may foretell a future she is powerless to prevent . . . or perhaps secretly seeks.

Jump at the Sun is a novel about an isolating suburban life and the continuing legacy of slavery, about generational change and the price of living the dream for which our parents fought. In her bold and fearless voice, Kim McLarin explores both the highs and lows of being a mother, and how breaking the cycle of suffocation and regret, while infuriatingly difficult, is absolutely necessary.

--This text refers to the Paperback edition.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

With a big house in an upscale Boston suburb, a doting scientist husband and two cute daughters, Grace, heroine of this penetrating novel of family affection and disaffection, is living the middle-class black woman's dream. But as she tends to her kids' wearying demands, fends off her husband's desire for a son and watches her sociology Ph.D. go to waste, she feels like "a claustrophobic in a mining shaft" and fantasizes about ditching her family. It's no idle daydream—her grandmother Rae repeatedly abandoned her children to search for whatever satisfactions life had to offer a Mississippi sharecropper's daughter, while her mother, Mattie, who sacrificed her happiness for her children's, offers an object lesson in the toll that family devotion can take. McLarin (Taming It Down) weaves the stories of three generations of mothers and daughters in astringent prose ("You couldn't be expected to live without them, but you'd better remember at all times, even with the good ones, that it was you against them," Grace muses of the wild cards that are men). Her characters chafe against the bonds of poverty, racism and feminine stereotypes, but their deeper struggle is to resolve their longing for fulfillment with ties of the heart. (July)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

From Booklist

For better or worse, each generation influences the next, and Grace does not know which generation of women in her family she resembles most. Her grandmother Royal was born into poverty in the south, one step up from slavery, and was willing to do anything to get away--including leaving her children. Mattie, her eldest daughter, would do anything for the love that her mother never gave her. She worked hard and sacrificed everything for family, even putting her children at risk financially to help her mother when she needed money. Grace, Mattie's daughter, appears to have the perfect life--a graduate degree in sociology, a loving stable husband and two young daughters--but she isn't sure that she's cut out for motherhood. As McLarin exposes how the past affects the present, she considers the problems facing African American women. With her distinctive style and unique perspective, McLarin gives her readers a thought-provoking story concerning the burdens of expectation each generation of women must bear. Patty Engelmann
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Hardcover: 320 pages
• Publisher: William Morrow (July 3, 2006)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0060528494
• ISBN-13: 978-0060528492
• Product Dimensions: 9.1 x 5.7 x 1.2 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.2 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.3 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (18 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,618,592 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

"You think your pain and your heartbreak are unprecedented in the history of the world, but then you read. It was books that taught me that the things that tormented me most were the very things that connected me with all the people who were alive, or who had ever been alive."
-- James Baldwin

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

8 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Jumping for my Sun, July 27, 2006

By 

Michelle Weaver (Baltimore, MD) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Jump at the Sun: A Novel (Hardcover)

I was looking for "Taming It Down" where I laughed, cried, booed, applauded & cheered throughout my read but "Jump for the Sun" had me looking at myself, my life, my choices and decisions, my mother, my sisters, my grandmother and my daughters. What have I passed on to them? What was passed on to me? Did I hurt them when I was only trying to prepare them for their journeys? A must read for young and old, if they are ready to look at themselves and want to push forward. We can learn from our pass but only if we are willing and able to look and accept life experiences for what they are....life experiences. It will have you saying hmmmmmmm.

6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Thoughtful and honest, October 29, 2006

By 

LlanosD "writer49" (NYC) - See all my reviews

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: Jump at the Sun: A Novel (Hardcover)

This novel is a thoughtful and honest exploration of the meaning of marriage and motherhood--always a dangerous thing in a society where the mere questioning of these concepts is considered hubris. The issue has been raised before by other writers but it is especially interesting to explore these within the context of contemporary middle class African American society. In spite of attaining academic, economic and professional success, marriage and motherhood are still the arbiters of a fulfilled life for a woman. What if, once having attained 'the good life' the woman finds herself unfulfilled and feeling just as bound as her poverty-stricken, uneducated ancestors? What if contemporaty middle class values and social respectability are just as limiting as physical and historical slavery? Within the context of family, has the role of the black woman changed at all in the past century? Given all the external changes, should her role within the family change? To what degree does she subjugate her own needs for the needs of others? And what price will she have to pay if she turns her back on the 'ideal' family? I suppose the central question of the novel to the main character is Now that you've 'made it', what more do you want and what are you willing to pay to get it? An interesting question asked of any woman. And an even more interesting question asked of a black woman.

7 of 9 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars deep character study, July 5, 2006

By 

Harriet Klausner - See all my reviews
(#1 Hall OF FAME REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Jump at the Sun: A Novel (Hardcover)

Ph.D. Grace Jefferson seems to be living the American dream. Her husband adores her and her two delightful daughters cherish her. They reside in a wonderfully large suburban home in the Boston area where her spouse is a highly regarded scientist and their kids attend the best schools.

So Grace asks herself why she is unhappy. Perhaps it is in her DNA to want to flee family responsibility as her sharecropping Grandma Rae did in Mississippi and her mom Mattie did not. In fact she wonders if she fears she is sacrificing her life for her family just like Mattie did. Though guilt threatens to suffocate her thoughts, Grace knows she loves her husband and their two children though currently their nagging demands are driving her crazy as she considers leaving the nest like Rae did and Mattie did not; grandma seemed to have pursued happiness while mom sacrificed hers.

JUMP AT THE SUN is a deep character study starring a fascinating woman who feels conflicting emotions that make any decisions difficult and somewhat unsatisfactory. Grace is a superb character as she is the epitome of Martin Luther King's I have a Dream with her education and her lifestyle but has doubts that is all there is as she is unhappy with her upper middle class existence. Though she openly detests de jure prejudice and proud of her state rejecting gay bashing laws like legally limiting marriages (Massachusetts has the lowest divorce rate in the country) and de facto prejudice (racial and gender poverty), Grace struggles with a deeper personal disaffection in this excellent thought provoking drama.

Harriet Klausner