Weekend Reading: Behold the Dreamers

Running a bit behind on getting this post up. I’ve decided to challenge myself to read one book per week, starting this month. I’m ready for a challenge – keeping up with life, work, my travel business, and creating awesome content. This weeks reading starts with Behold the Dreamers by Imbolo Mbue.

Title: Behold the Dreamers
Publisher: Penguin Random House, New York
Genre: Fiction
Format: Paperback
Goodreads Rating: 3.94

Jende Jonga, a Cameroonian immigrant living in Harlem, has come to the United States to provide a better life for himself, his wife, Neni, and their six-year-old son. In the fall of 2007, Jende can hardly believe his luck when he lands a job as a chauffeur for Clark Edwards, a senior executive at Lehman Brothers. Clark’s wife, Cindy, even offers to Neni temporary work at their summer home in the Hamptons. With these opportunities, Jende and Neni can imagine a brighter future.

However, the world of great privilege conceals troubling secrets, and soon Jende and Neni notice cracks in their employers’ facades.

Then the financial world is rocked with the collapse of Lehman Brothers and the global economy. Desperate to keep Jende’s job, which grows more tenuous by the day, the Jongas try to protect the Edwardses from certain truths, even as their own marriage threatens to fall apart. As all four lives are are dramatically upended, Jende and Neni are forced to make an impossible choice.

Selected as Oprah’s 2017 bookclub pick, Behold the Dreamers follows a family trying to achieve the American dream. Plagued with issues that affect many today – marriage, lost, immigration, race, and class, along with the hinderances of achieving this dream. Picked up this book due solely on the title alone. A bit of a dreamer, the title had me hooked. I love to get lost in a book and relate to every aspect of it. Curious to see the outcome of the Jonga’s intense need to be in America. I mean what better place to live… well according to them. Anything is better than home.

Have you read Behold the Dreamers by Imbolo Imbue?