An American Marriage

Set in the American South, An American Marriage follows newlyweds Celestial and Roy Hamilton as they build a life together in Atlanta, Georgia. Roy, a rising executive sales representative, and Celestial, an emerging artist known for her custom dolls, embody the promise of a modern marriage founded on mutual respect and shared ambition. During a visit to Roy’s family in rural Louisiana, their world is shattered when Roy is wrongfully accused and convicted of rape, resulting in a twelve-year prison sentence. Separated by the harsh realities of the criminal justice system, the couple fights to preserve their bond through deeply personal letters, each oscillating between love, frustration, and longing. Over time, Celestial’s art career flourishes while Roy endures the isolating brutality of incarceration, causing their correspondence to fray into painful silence. Amidst his confinement, Celestial finds solace in a relationship with Roy’s best friend, André, whose compassion offers her a fragile new hope. When Roy’s conviction is overturned, he returns home to a changed reality: his marriage and identity irrevocably altered by separation and betrayal. Told through shifting perspectives and an epistolary structure, Jones’s narrative explores themes of race, power, and the fragile line between love and obligation. Drawing on poetry and the epistolary tradition, this masterpiece earned Oprah’s Book Club 2.0 selection and won the 2019 Women’s Prize for Fiction, solidifying its place as a modern classic of literary fiction.