Caucasia

Opening in racially torn 1970s Boston, the absorbing, affecting first novel Caucasia explores the politics of skin color as played out in a biracial family. Eight-year-old narrator Birdie Lee looks more like her mother, Sandy, a white civil rights activist, while Birdie's beloved older sister resembles their father, an African-American intellectual. After the Lees' marriage unravels, Sandy and Birdie move to a nearly all-white New Hampshire suburb — where, years later, Birdie must confront her racial identity and the lost half of her family. Senna's dynamic storytelling illuminates personal revelations that are anything but black-and-white. A-