In Transcendent Kingdom, Gifty, a neuroscience PHD student born into a Ghanaian family in Huntsville, Alabama, grapples with the loss of her father and brother and the echoes of an evangelical upbringing in a white Pentecostal community. The narrative moves between Gifty’s childhood and teenage years, where legends of her absent father’s greatness abound and Gifty’s star-athlete brother Nana is her superhero, to the present, where the characters of Gifty’s past are starkly real and complex. Through Gifty’s parents, Gyasi examines both the immigrant dream of America and the conflicting desire for home, family, and tradition. While Gifty’s mother is determined that America is the key to her children’s success and happiness, her father’s yearning to go back to his roots in Ghana leads him to leave his wife and children behind. The reverberations of this abandonment and Nana’s heroin overdose are felt throughout Gifty’s life. Gifty struggles to form meaningful relationships and open up about her family’s past, instead throwing herself into her research into the neural pathways involved in addiction and depression. When her mother suffers a major depressive episode and moves into Gifty’s apartment, and fellow PHD students Katherine and Han make persistent attempts to befriend Gifty and break down her walls, she is forced to confront the past she’s been avoiding. Having long since rejected religion in favor of science, Gifty begins to feel drawn to her evangelical roots. In her poignant and intricate second novel, Gyasi provides a compelling meditation on the reconciliation of science and religion, the complexity of grief, and the challenges faced by immigrants in a prejudiced and white-washed America.