In the same vein of Kalisha Buckhanon’s critically-acclaimed debut novel Upstate , again she shares an emotionally beautiful story about today’s youth that magnifies the unforgettable power of hope and the human spirit. Buckhanon takes us to Chicago, 1992, and into the life of fifteen-year-old Shivana Montgomery, who believes all Black women wind up the same: single and raising children alone, like her mother. Until the sudden visit of her beautiful and free-spirited Aunt Jewel, Shivana spends her days desperately struggling to understand life and the growing pains of her environment. When she accidentally becomes pregnant by an older man and must decide what to do, she begins a journey towards adulthood with only a mysterious voice inside to guide her. When she falls in love with Rasul, a teenager with problems of his own, together they fight to rise above their circumstances and move toward a more positive future. Through the voice of the unborn child and a narrative sweeping from slavery onward, Buckhanon narrates Shivana’s connection to a past history of Black women who found themselves at the mercy of tragic circumstances. Adult/High School–Buckhanons second novel firmly establishes her as a timeless voice for a new generation. The point of view alternates between 15-year-old Shivana Montgomery and that of her unborn baby. The two are tied together by the idea of young black women who are used and then forsaken by men. Shivana plans to abort the baby, whose father is a married drug dealer now in jail, but then she meets a man who makes her want to try to live a happy life, one that includes the child. The narrative of the unborn takes readers back in time through several generations of black women during the periods of slavery, Reconstruction, and Harlem in the 1940s. An authenticity of language and action permeates the novel. The realities of poor Chicago life and Shivanas desperation to escape lead to a sad, seemingly predestined conclusion, yet do not detract from the underlying foundations of love and hope. Teens who like Toni Morrisons work, Buckhanons Upstate (St. Martins, 2005), and other realistic novels will enjoy this one. –Charli Osborne, Oxford Public Library, MI Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. KALISHA BUCKHANON's first novel Upstate won an American Library Association Alex Award and was nominated for the Hurston/Wright Foundation Legacy Award in Debut Fiction.  Terry McMillan selected her to receive the first Terry McMillan Young Author Award in 2006. A recipient of a 2001 Illinois Arts Council Artist Fellowship and an Andrew Mellon Fellow, Buckhanon frequently teaches writing and speaks throughout the country. She has an M.F.A. in Creative Writing from New School University in New York City, and both a B.A. and an M.A. in English Language and Literature from the University of Chicago. She was born in 1977 in Kankakee, Illinois. Reviewed by Kim McLarin On the same day I began reading Kalisha Buckhanon's ambitious new novel, Conception, I just happened to receive a newsletter from a major African American literary Web site featuring its latest bestseller list. Among the top 10 works of fiction were three by the erotic writer Zane, plus books whose titles all included the words Sex, Whore, Hustler or Thug. That list, however unscientific it may be, perfectly delineates the continental divide between so-called street lit and works by more traditionally literary African American writers, not one of whom appears within shouting distance of the bestseller list. What's interesting to note is how young writers such as Buckhanon seem intent not on taking up positions along this divide but on straddling it. Conception is Buckhanon's second novel, a work of urban fiction that mixes the usual streetwise tales of woe with casual references to Zora Neale Hurston, Toni Morrison and the occasional bit of French. It is not always a smooth or successful effort, but it is a valiant one. The heroine is 15-year-old Shivana, who lives in a Chicago slum and believes that most black women stumble blindly into the same painful trap: meet some man, believe his sweet talk, bear his offspring, then watch him leave. "Planning pregnancy was for White women," she says. "Every woman I had ever known just got caught -- caught up in some man to the point where she was foolish enough to drop a load for him, believe all that 'carry my seed I'm gonna love you and my child' sweet talk." Shivana's own mother has followed this scenario, ending up bitter and alone. The poor woman -- who has survived not only abandonment by her man but a childhood injury, the loss of a mother to cancer, a father to stroke and a brother to crack -- takes a lifetime of fear and disappointment out on Shivana, beating the child so fiercely at the beginning of the novel that her magical transformation into a loving and thoughtful parent halfway through is hard to believe. Shivana, seeki