Chandon comes from a difficult family. Her father served in the Middle East and died overseas; her Black family is still uneasy about her white mother; most of them still don’t know she’s gay; and expectations are high as she heads to her freshman year at Franklin University, an historically Black university of high prestige. But Chandon’s biggest challenge yet is balancing new flame Corey with close friend Alisha.
Verde Arzu’s PROMISE KEEPER leads with its values. The university setting supports that intention: with passionate young people jockeying for academic and social recognition, the frequency of explicitly ideological conversation rings true. That drive for Black excellence is acknowledged on its own terms, but also in the context of police violence, activism, and the early years of the Black Lives Matter movement—high achievement is one strategy for defense against white violence. College is also a period of confusion and self-discovery, and that becomes particularly fraught for Chandon, with her complex layers of identity informing her ideas about the world. Again, the setting is well-framed to support this journey: choosing between a Black student group or an LGBTQ+ student group, for instance, is weighted with Chandon’s anxiety over self-definition. These complex emotional journeys are carried on brisk, highly visual prose, and often with a touch of humor. The old collegiate buildings at Franklin, for example, stand “like well-dressed, sophisticated people from high society, ready to serve students tea, crumpets, and a high-quality education.”
PROMISE KEEPER does struggle somewhat with structure, and that affects the character arcs. The central relationship, for instance, feels unbalanced. Corey is introduced in the very first scene, making an immediate and powerful impression; Alisha is only introduced several chapters later, and her presence is much subtler. As a result, the intense, competitive jealousy between them feels surprising. The reader doesn’t get nearly as much of Chandon’s relationship with Alisha before this friction becomes central to the plot. Meanwhile, some plot threads ultimately don’t go anywhere, distracting from the more compelling central relationships (Chandon’s mom has a new boyfriend, mentioned in two scenes).
The text also has a tendency to over-describe, especially setting (“we seemed to fill up the large square room with its big windows that revealed our campus’s large trees and perfectly manicured lawn. On the opposite side of the room were two doors with square-shaped glass cut outs. One door is at the front of the class, and the other is at the back”) and outfits (“He wore a light gray jogger set with three shirts layered underneath the unzipped hooded jacket. The first was white, the second was red, and the last had blue and white vertical stripes. His sleeves were scrunched up, and he matched it with a pair of black and gray high-top Nike Blazers”). There’s nothing wrong with this level of description per se, but it doesn’t serve the plot or meaningfully develop character. Instead, it takes time away from the core narrative and its themes.
Although trimming could strengthen the central narrative and create more time to develop the core relationships, PROMISE KEEPER never loses sight of its values, nor of the complexity and humanity of Black lives in America.
Verde Arzu’s PROMISE KEEPER never loses sight of its rich and timely thematic heart.
~Dan Accardi for IndieReader