In This Corner

In This Corner is a coming-of-age novel that spans more than a decade in the life of Kia Michaels - from a little girl navigating the space between two women who love her in completely different ways, to a young woman finally learning what it means to choose herself.

Raised mostly by her Aunt Helen while her mother Bo remains a complicated, magnetic presence on the edges of her life, Kia grows up absorbing lessons she never asked for - about her body, her worth, and what kind of love she deserves. When high school brings new complications, including a boy named Todd-Alan who makes her pulse go sideways, and a connection she never saw coming, Kia begins the slow, painful, sometimes beautiful work of figuring out who she is outside of everyone else's expectations.

Told through the voices of Kia, Ash, Helen, and Bo, In This Corner is a novel about the corners we are backed into, the ones we paint ourselves into, and the ones we finally turn.