Transcendent Kingdom opens Goodreads in a new tab

Gifty is a sixth-year PhD candidate in neuroscience at Stanford, studying reward-seeking behavior and addiction in mice. Her brother Nana died of an opioid overdose, and her mother is in a deep depression. Raised in an evangelical Ghanaian immigrant family in Alabama, Gifty struggles to reconcile science with the faith of her childhood. Yaa Gyasi's novel explores grief, family, immigration, and the limits of both science and religion.