Last Night in Brooklyn

The novel opens in 2010 as narrator Alicia Forten receives word that Freddy's, a beloved Brooklyn bar, will close to make way for a stadium development. The regulars plan one last party, and Alicia attends, half hoping to see La Garza, a fashion designer and local legend she lost years earlier. Standing on the street at dawn, she invokes her grandmother's saying, El mono sabe en qué palo trepa (The monkey knows the tree it climbs), and asks: What happens when a monkey climbs something it has never encountered before?

The narrative jumps to the fall of 2005. Alicia is the daughter of a Puerto Rican former paralegal and a Black man from a prominent Martha's Vineyard family. Her father, whom she calls el Fantasma (the ghost), barely acknowledged her until she was ten, then changed her surname from Canales to Forten. Alicia's mother pushed her relentlessly toward marrying "the right kind of man." Now engaged to James, a steady medical student in Syracuse, Alicia panics at the prospect of relocating. They agree to postpone the wedding and do long-distance.

Alicia is stuck at her grandmother's in working-class Gravesend until her coworker Lorraine, a former R&B singer turned actress, invites her to Fort Greene. At a local bar, she discovers a community of young, ambitious people, including Marcus, a television producer, and Aaron Francis, a lawyer. That same night, she glimpses La Garza winning a reckless shopping cart race down Lafayette Avenue, arms flung wide, bellowing to the crowd. She moves into Lorraine's apartment the following week, telling James it is about the commute but really fleeing the sense that her life has already been decided.

Two years pass before a chance encounter reunites Alicia with her cousin Devon Forten, a Wall Street banker and her father's nephew. Devon and his wife Marla, a Jamaican beef patty heiress who attended Yale, have bought a brownstone near Fort Greene Park. At dinner, Alicia meets Matteo Jones, a striking financier who moonlights as DJ Tayo. During a drunken house tour, Matteo kisses Alicia. She pretends it never happened.

One Friday in late April, Alicia misses her weekly bus to Syracuse after lingering at an exhibition in the Met and decides to stay in the city. That night she accompanies Marla to the Dumbo loft of Felix, a painter Devon bankrolls to keep Marla entertained. The evening devolves into drugs and confrontation. The next morning, as Alicia drives Marla home, La Garza watches them from her fire escape with a strange, unreadable look.

Days later, a handwritten note on heavy stationery arrives at Alicia's door: La Garza is inviting her to a party. The party is a three-floor spectacle culminating on a rooftop where celebrities mix with locals. There, flanked by Augusts Jankovskis, her Latvian investor, La Garza announces her company's initial public offering (IPO).

After the party, Matteo reveals that La Garza once made custom shirts for Wall Street analysts, including Devon. They dated seriously until Devon left for business school, abandoning her without a goodbye. His mother blocked La Garza's calls. Matteo warns that La Garza recognized the Forten surname and wants a connection to Devon for the IPO. Alicia decides that if La Garza asks for help, she will give it.

The ask comes over lunch at Bergdorf Goodman: La Garza needs someone at a major bank to champion the IPO, and Devon is her target. At a staged fitting in her studio, she presents Devon with an ice-blue jacket cut from his old measurements. Devon discovers the letters HBTY embroidered in the lining, a callback to her old game of hiding song titles in garments. He agrees to help but breaks down on the street afterward, cursing Alicia for reconnecting them. That evening, Matteo identifies the song: "Holding Back the Years" by Simply Red.

As summer intensifies, Alicia initiates a "break" from James, framing it as needing to focus on work, and her relationship with Matteo deepens. Devon orchestrates a media blitz, sanitizing La Garza's biography. In reality, she was born Garza Rivera in the Farragut Houses, Brooklyn's public housing projects. Her baby sister Karina died in the September 11 attacks, which destroyed her family and career. She reconnected with Augusts, who kept her afloat through insider stock tips and his uncle's money, though the arrangement required carrying phantom employees on her payroll. La Garza Ltd. opens at seven dollars a share and climbs to 20. Devon and La Garza are seen everywhere together, and a gossip column blind item makes the affair public. Over dinner, Devon reveals he has purchased properties near the stadium site, planning to demolish them for luxury condos.

Marla confronts La Garza on her rooftop, asking whether she is sleeping with Devon. La Garza deflects, and Marla leaves falsely reassured. Privately, La Garza tells Alicia she is in love with Devon and insists he will leave Marla by Labor Day. Meanwhile, Alicia returns her engagement ring to James, admitting she wanted the security of being wanted more than the relationship itself.

Everything collapses during a Hamptons weekend. At La Garza's pop-up store, a portrait by Felix hangs prominently: Devon in his suit with La Garza in his lap. Augusts confronts Alicia viciously. The next morning, Omar, La Garza's close friend, is arrested in an insider trading investigation linked to Augusts's brokerage. Marla summons Devon's parents for a family lunch. Devon's mother interrogates La Garza, who recounts calling the Forten home years ago and being told to "move on." She asks Devon to leave with her. His father intervenes: "Son, there are responsibilities, and then there are dalliances. Sit down." After an agonizing pause, Devon pulls his chair back in. La Garza walks away alone.

Before dawn, Alicia finds La Garza tearstained at her kitchen table. La Garza recounts hiding for hours after spotting one of Augusts's uncle's men parked outside. She tells Alicia her life story and speaks of Devon with unbroken conviction. At the door, she kisses Alicia and whispers, "You're more one of us than one of them."

That afternoon, Alicia passes out from heat at Soul Summit, an outdoor dance event in Fort Greene Park. Reviving, she realizes she has never attended without seeing La Garza. She races to the studio and finds La Garza dead in the bathtub.

The autopsy reveals La Garza was strangled. Alicia and Matteo suspect Augusts or his uncle's people but cannot prove it. Matteo phones in an anonymous tip about the company's books. The Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) raids Augusts's brokerage, but investigators never connect La Garza's murder to him. Augusts vanishes. La Garza's studio is destroyed by arson.

At the memorial, all of Brooklyn turns out. La Garza's younger brother Soto arrives in military uniform, carrying monthly letters she wrote him through his years of service. Devon does not attend. At the repast, Matteo invites Alicia to join him and his ailing mother in Hawaii. She declines, recognizing she needs to discover herself independent of any man. Matteo kisses her goodbye and walks inside.

The narrative returns to the Freddy's frame. The friends have scattered: Lorraine to Philadelphia, Marcus to Los Angeles, Aaron Francis married in London. After stumbling out of Freddy's at dawn, Alicia walks to Dean Street and finds the luxury condos Devon built standing where the old buildings once were. She pulls a brick from a nearby construction site and hurls it through one of the windows, then runs home as fast as her legs can carry her.