Time’s Undoing

Head’s (Warn Me When It’s Time) latest is narrated by two protagonists and encompasses 100 years of racial unrest in Birmingham, AL. In 1929, Robert Lee Harrington is a Black carpenter relocating to Birmingham with his wife and young daughter. In 2019, Meghan McKenzie is a Black journalist working for the Detroit Free Press and researching her family’s history in her free time. She has grown up hearing the tragic account of her great-grandfather’s suspicious death. When the Black Lives Matter movement spurs Meghan to travel to Birmingham to conduct research, she thrills to the prospect of finally solving her family mystery as well. As the story jumps between Meghan’s attempts to coerce threads of information from uncooperative officials and Robert’s struggles to keep his family safe in Jim Crow–era Alabama, the narratives begin to intersect. As a Black man in the segregated South, Robert is is walking a precarious line, but Meghan’s ability to uncover deep secrets also puts her in danger. While Head’s novel deals with the grimmer side of human nature, it also depicts the power of friends and community.