Full disclosure. I read Wanda M. Morris’ debut novel, All Her Little Secrets, way back in April. Morris was on a panel I moderated for Library Journal Day of Dialog in May. I also interviewed her for a profile in Library Journal. Her book was the Lead Read for the season for her publisher HarperCollins. That means the different houses and publicists are all promoting this book.

Ellice Littlejohn is the only Black attorney in a law firm in Atlanta. She followed her boss there because she’s been having an affair with him for years. In fact, she and Michael Sayles have a pre-work meeting in his office one morning. She walks in to find his body. He’s been shot. Ellice turns around and walks out without telling anyone, hoping she hasn’t been caught on camera. Ellice wants to protect her brother, who has a criminal record, and she wants to protect the secrets from her past. She’s used to keeping secrets, though. That’s what lawyers do. And, that’s what smart young Black girls learn in Chillicothe, Georgia.

Ellice and her brother, Sam, grew up in a dilapidated shotgun house in Chillicothe. Her mother was sometimes around, sometimes with the wrong men. Miss Vee watched out for Ellice and Sam, and she’s the one who made sure the smart young girl got out of town, heading to boarding school in Virginia on a full-ride scholarship. She was fourteen, strong, and too big for the place. But Miss Vee warned her, “Remember, you have to work twice as hard as those white kids, even though you just as smart.” Ellice has done that ever since, and she blames herself for Sam’s troubles. She left him behind when she left Chillicothe for a better life.

Was it a better life? Ellice questions herself. “How many pieces of myself had I thrown away on the way to corporate success?” She’s even offered Michael’s position. But, it doesn’t take long for her to realize that there’s a secret club in the law firm, and as the lone Black person on the top floor, she’s not in that club. It also doesn’t take long for her to realize that Michael was about to turn on the firm. His death, one that looked like a suicide, was actually a homicide. And, someone in that law firm is more than willing to let Ellice take the fall.

All Her Little Secrets is a crime novel, but, even more important, it is a story of one young person growing up poor, Black, and female in rural Georgia. It’s a story of getting out of that background, but at what cost? Morris’ book is about family and all the ways family is connected. It’s about tokenism, and race, the legal system, and keeping secrets. Ellice was, “the lone Black person, expected to speak on behalf of Black folks everywhere, the one expected to represent the success of failure of every Black woman who worked in corporate America.” Wanda M. Morris says she’s been there. Maybe her story isn’t as extreme as Ellice Littlejohn’s, but her debut novel allows readers to see that world through Ellice’s eyes, that world, with all its ugliness.

Wanda M. Morris’ website is https://wandamorriswrites.com/

All Her Little Secrets by Wanda M. Morris. William Morrow, 2021. ISBN 9780030824465 (paperback), 384p.

FTC Full Disclosure – I received an ARC to read before the panel.