Runner

In this gripping, emotionally layered novel set in Prohibition-era Martha’s Vineyard, a young woman from a Black seafaring family plunges into the dangerous world of rum-running to save her home and uncover the truth about her father’s death.

Martha’s Vineyard, 1923. The sea was the gift that kept on giving to Lena Jameson’s father, Earl, a fisherman turned successful rumrunner who built up a small fortune smuggling liquor from offshore ships to thirsty customers back on the island. But when Earl and his entire crew are lost in a mysterious shipwreck that some whisper was no accident, his loved ones are left reeling and penniless—and Lena, who’d been on the cusp of a college career in Boston, sees her future slipping away.

Desperate to save her family as well as her own hopes of escaping their small town, Lena decides to take over Earl’s rum-running business. For a crew, she ropes in Walter, her roguish big brother who leans too hard on the bottle; Sam, her steadfast local boyfriend who wants to keep her tethered to shore; and Dee, a glamorous young woman from Boston who is summering in the Vineyard and offers Lena a glimpse of the future that she still wants for herself—and who’s keeping her own explosive secret.

The foursome embarks on a journey from the quaint, colorful streets of Oak Bluffs through gangland Boston to the jazz-filled clubs of Harlem during its Renaissance, all in search of quick money—and the truth about the shipwreck. But as buried secrets rise to the surface and the temptations of the glittering underworld pull Lena in deeper, everything she’s fought to protect soon hangs in the balance: her heart, her family, and her place in a world that’s quick to condemn women who dare to want more.