ALMOST CRIMSON

by Dasha Kelly; Curbside Splendor (280 pages, $15.95)

Dasha Kelly’s novel “Almost Crimson” isn’t set in New York, but it kept bringing to mind what Aretha Franklin sang about a rose in black and Spanish Harlem: “It is a special one / It never sees the sun.”

For much of the story, both conditions apply, figuratively, to Crimson (CeCe) Weathers. CeCe grows up not only poor and black but also as the only child of a mother with depression so paralyzing that her little girl has to make sure the bills are paid and their underwear is washed.

Just as other bright, lonely children have, CeCe finds comfort and joy in the library, particularly after she’s invited to become a school librarian’s assistant. From early on, she also displays an artistic consciousness, exemplified in her reaction to a gift of a small fish bowl filled with yellow snapdragons and other flowers: “She never wanted to forget this moment, this smell, these exact shades of sunshine, lemon, maize, construction hat, yolk, taxi, sunflower, bumblebee, mustard.” (Kelly, her creator, is a well-known Milwaukee poet and spoken-word performer.)

But without a functional mother to serve as her role model, the normal passages of growing up and the challenges of navigating racism are even more difficult for CeCe. Readers of any color who grew up with a mentally ill parent may connect with her wariness, frustration and self-protective routines.

In this coming-of-

age story, Kelly intersperses moments of CeCe’s childhood with her present life as a young working adult. The powerful organizational skills she developed as a girl have served her well at the office, but not so much for adult emotional life. A loving roommate tells her, “Your mother isn’t the only one who’s been shaped by this life you’ve shared. When you first moved in, with all your lists and notes and routines, you lived like someone who’d just gotten out of military school.”

Painfully, pointedly shy as she is, CeCe is unusually fortunate in the mentors and confidantes she attracts, from the kind neighbor who taught her a rhyming game to the older white friend who bequeaths her a generous gift. She’s fortunate to the point that hard-boiled realists might call the novel out for sentimentality.

But CeCe is no plucky Disney child. She suffers and struggles. Like “The Color Purple,” which comes up a few times in Kelly’s novel, “Almost Crimson” is a story of hardship and suffering redeemed by emotional growth and love.

While “Almost Crimson” is not a YA book per se, the scenes of CeCe’s childhood, coping with her mother, with social workers and with school conflicts, are so compelling I would want to put this novel in the hands of teens like CeCe with a depressed parent. Portions of the novel about her adult life deal, tastefully and with humor, with her virginity and what she might do about that, so parents, librarians and teachers will want to consider that. I would have been fine with either of my teens reading “Almost Crimson.”