The Warmest December

The Warmest December tells the story of Kenzie Lowe, an African-American woman who is struggling to reconcile her feelings toward her father, an alcoholic who was physically and verbally abusive toward his family. As the novel opens, Kenzie’s father, Hyman Lowe (“Hy-Lo”), lies unconscious and dying in a hospital bed in Brooklyn, where Kenzie is visiting him. Much of the novel is comprised of Kenzie’s flashbacks to her childhood and adolescence in the 1970s and 1980s as she visits her father, in which she recalls the harrowing abuse she, her younger brother Malcolm, and her mother Della suffered at the hands of Hy-Lo.