Author Rob Cole’s tribute to a beloved friend is a tender accolade and a thoughtful reflection on the forces that shape a life.
The book opens with Arlinda Willis, an older black woman, meeting the younger, white, British author when he joins the San Francisco law firm where she works as a secretary. This begins an 18-year friendship founded on shared lunches that expands to Cole’s support of Arlinda during her battle with esophageal cancer.
Interspersed with scenes of her diagnosis and decline are flashbacks in which Cole imagines Arlinda’s childhood in segregated Alabama and her teenage years during the Civil Rights era in Ohio. Throughout, Cole soberly reflects on the abuse and systemic racism Arlinda encountered, but also her successes in work and travel.
The book displays Cole’s careful historical research and heartfelt labor, with considered, sometimes grand prose. Arlinda emerges as a spirited, determined woman with a vulnerable core beneath her sassy veneer. While certain details are unique, like her time as a dancer on the variety show Upbeat, much of the book chronicles Arlinda’s cancer journey, which is all-too-familiar territory.
Certain narrative choices impede the sense of a coherent whole. Characters enter and depart without context, leaving confusion around Arlinda’s family structure and supportive relationships. Cole’s choice to alternate flashbacks of a younger Arlinda with scenes of her adult life breaks up the arc of their developing relationship, fragmenting the book’s emotional and narrative backbone. And the author’s decision to treat himself as a character proves a self-conscious move, drawing attention away from Arlinda.
The book finds its real footing in the fluency and poignancy of the final chapters, when Cole turns to his own memoir and the story becomes what it wanted to be all along: one man’s journey through unexpected love and grief. While the book is an uneven meshing of points of view, the sincerity of emotion, careful prose, and thoughtful reflection on the value of human relationship appeal.
Also available in hardcover and ebook.