Renée Watson’s debut adult novel has a gorgeous new cover that encapsulates all the beauty the pages have to offer.
First released in May 2024, skin & bones follows Lena Baker, a plus-size Black single mother in Portland who’s set to marry the love of her life. But the stable life she’s created for herself — including her career in DEI, loyal friend group, close-knit family and church community — is upended when her fiancé drops a bombshell on their wedding day. Now, the 40-year-old must navigate an unexpected new reality, while confronting insecurities surrounding identity and self-image as she strives to teach her daughter about self-love and acceptance.
Originally written as a play, skin & bones, with its poetic and evocative prose, is a fervent exploration of Blackness, fatness, sisterhood and motherhood, faith and family.
“In so many ways Portland, Ore. is a character in skin & bones so it is fitting to have the cityscape of Portland anchoring Lena,” the author told PEOPLE about the new cover. “Her hometown holds all the people and places that have shaped her. The deep sisterhood she shares with her best friends, the teen love and new romance, everything her mother taught her, the consequences of Portland’s urban renewal plan — it’s all present, all the time. I love how this new vibrant cover speaks to these relationships.”
The themes of the book resonate deeply with Watson, too.
In an interview publisher Little, Brown and Company shared in a press release last spring, Watson said that while her story is different from Lena’s story, she “drew from very real feelings and experiences of what it was like growing up as a Black girl in the Pacific Northwest.”
“I relate to Lena feeling both invisible and visible at the same time,” the Coretta Scott King Award winner said. “Because of my dark skin, hair texture and size, I stood out … even though I stood out, I was often overlooked, marginalized and silenced.”
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Watson, who’s best known for her work in Young Adult and middle-grade fiction such as the New York Times bestseller Piecing Me Together, revealed that while she’s “been in conversation with young readers about family and friendship, beauty and self-love and faith and activism through my fiction and poetry for just over a decade,” she wanted to “expand that conversation” to the adults in her readers’ lives.
“For every reader who identifies with Lena, I hope they feel seen and validated,” the author continued. “I hope the characters push us to rethink how we define beauty, and ultimately, I hope skin & bones brings to mind the legacy that has been left for us, the legacy we are leaving.”
skin & bones will be available in paperback May 6 and the new edition is available for preorder now, wherever books are sold.
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