We Hope for Better Things

The novel weaves three timelines set in and around a farmhouse in rural Lapeer County, Michigan, tracing one family's entanglement with race, love, and loss from the Civil War through the 1967 Detroit riots to the present day.

In the present-day storyline, Elizabeth Balsam, a journalist at the Detroit Free Press known for exposing corruption, meets James Rich, an elderly Black man, and his son Linden, a kicker for the Detroit Lions, at a downtown diner. Mr. Rich has recovered a camera and never-before-published photographs from a police evidence locker; they belonged to his late uncle, William Rich, and he wants them returned to William's wife, Nora Balsam, whom he believes is Elizabeth's relative. Linden suspects Elizabeth will exploit the riot-era photos journalistically. Elizabeth confirms that Nora is her great-aunt on her father's side and agrees to help.

Elizabeth is then fired from the Free Press after her editor, Jack McKnight, makes her the scapegoat for a botched undercover investigation into Judge Ryan Sharpe, a former National Guardsman whose conduct during the 1967 riots she has been probing. Jack had assigned Elizabeth to pose as "Dana Bowers" and date the judge's son, Vic Sharpe; when Vic discovers the ruse, Jack terminates Elizabeth to protect the paper. Devastated and jobless, Elizabeth commits to delivering the camera to Nora and arranges a stay at the farmhouse through a relative, who privately asks Elizabeth to assess whether the elderly woman can still live independently.

Elizabeth arrives at the isolated 1859 farmhouse to find Nora, a petite, sharp-witted woman in her eighties, living alone amid antique furniture, handmade quilts—including an elaborate Victorian crazy quilt sewn by her ancestor Mary Balsam—and layers of hidden history. Nora assigns Elizabeth the task of restoring an overgrown herb garden. As she works, Elizabeth uncovers the property's secrets: narrow cots lining the attic, a locked steamer trunk, a gravestone dated 1861 in the garden, and a locked basement room that proves to be a photographic darkroom hung with portraits of a young blonde woman. She also meets Tyrese, a landscaper secretly paid by Mr. Rich. Nora sometimes calls Tyrese "William," one of several signs that she speaks of her long-absent husband as though he is still present.

The novel's earliest timeline, set during the Civil War, reveals the farmhouse's origins as a station on the Underground Railroad. In 1861, Mary Balsam, a young pregnant woman, is left alone on the farm when her husband Nathaniel enlists in the Union Army. Nathaniel sends her a trunk containing George, a gravely injured escaped enslaved man he has arranged to shelter. When Mary goes into premature labor with only George present, he delivers her stillborn baby, digs the grave, and promises never to leave her. Over the years, they run the farm together, taking in more people escaping enslavement. Their daily letters grow increasingly intimate, and Mary falls deeply in love with George. He carves an extraordinary bedstead of intertwined light and dark wood for her, a piece Elizabeth will discover generations later.

When a farmhand reveals that Nathaniel visited a prostitute during his furlough, Mary writes George a letter confessing her love. In 1864, Bartholomew Sharpe, an ancestor of the judge Elizabeth has been investigating, rides onto the property with armed men to threaten the Black workers; Mary orders him off her land. In 1873, Mary and George consummate their love while stranded by a broken wagon. That same night, armed men set the barn on fire, killing several farmhands; Mary suspects her eldest son, Little George, helped the attackers. In 1874, Mary gives birth to George's child, a baby whose light brown skin reveals his parentage. The midwife secretly swaps the infant with the daughter of a local prostitute and spirits the boy away. Mary dies in 1875, possibly poisoned by Little George; on her deathbed, she tells George their son is out in the world, lost.

The 1960s timeline follows Nora's courtship with William Rich. Twenty-year-old Nora encounters William at a Detroit art exhibition where he has displayed a photograph of her father, Daniel Balsam, lunging at the camera in a racist rage. To suppress the image, Nora buys William a professional camera, and a connection sparks between them. After attending Martin Luther King Jr.'s speech at Cobo Hall in June 1963, which awakens her to the reality of racial injustice, Nora proposes marriage, and they wed the next day.

Daniel disowns Nora and cuts off all financial support. The couple cannot find housing; realtors refuse to show them apartments in white neighborhoods, and at a drive-in theater a man holds a knife to Nora's throat, telling her she does not belong. Nora's mother, Mallory, quietly offers the family farmhouse, and the couple retreats there. When Nora becomes pregnant, William takes a factory job in Flint, but she miscarries. Mallory visits and suggests the loss may have been a blessing since a mixed-race child would have faced discrimination; Nora throws her out and severs contact. From her elderly Great-Aunt Margaret, Nora learns the attic farmhands were formerly enslaved people, and that her grandfather Little George's resentment of them seeded the racism defining her father's generation.

In July 1967, William's nephew J.J. goes missing amid the erupting Detroit riots after looting and destroying property with his friend Arnold, driven by rage over a friend's shooting by police. William rushes to the city with his camera and finds J.J. Together they navigate the burning streets, William stopping to photograph the devastation. Two young National Guardsmen stop them; one, named Ryan Sharpe, poses for a photograph. Minutes later, a sniper fires, guardsmen return fire, and a bullet strikes William. J.J. is knocked unconscious. William's body is never recovered; his camera bag becomes police evidence.

In the present, Elizabeth and Tyrese grow closer through shared work on the garden and quiet dates. An alternative newspaper called the Beat offers Elizabeth a features editor position, forcing her to choose between her career and her commitment to Nora. On Christmas, Nora presents Elizabeth with a quilt she has been secretly sewing for months, a fabric rendering of the restored garden. On New Year's Eve, working alongside Tyrese at his family's nursery, Elizabeth decides to turn down the job and stay.

Elizabeth arranges for Mr. Rich and Linden to visit the farmhouse. Nora recognizes Mr. Rich as J.J. and storms out, but Elizabeth persuades her to listen. Mr. Rich recounts the riot night and William's death. Nora reveals she always knew William was dead but locked the darkroom, unable to bear seeing his final photographs. The box of photos reveals William's extraordinary final work: devastating portraits of people caught in the destruction, including one of a young Ryan Sharpe. Elizabeth gives this lead to her former colleague Desiree at the Free Press, choosing not to claim the story for herself. Linden identifies the darkroom portraits as images of young Nora by her distinctive blue eyes.

Elizabeth apologizes to Vic Sharpe and asks him to help publish a book of William's photography. Nora begins attending Mr. Rich's church and starts the slow work of forgiving J.J. In an epilogue, Nora dies peacefully beneath Mary's crazy quilt, and Elizabeth discovers a key hidden in its embroidery that opens the attic trunk. Inside she finds a photograph bearing William's distinctive style and, beneath a false bottom, the shredded remains of Mary and George's love letters, destroyed by mice. One item survives: a photograph of a light-skinned boy with blue eyes, captioned "our boy," the lost child of Mary and George. Elizabeth resolves to remain in the house, learn to sew, and keep uncovering the family's hidden history, recognizing that a single generation's neglect can erase an entire legacy.