This news got buried in the holiday onslaught, and it deserves room to breathe: The 2018 Seattle Reads selection is Yaa Gyasi's novel Homegoing.

Seattle Reads is the Seattle Public Library program formerly known as If All Seattle Read the Same Book. Basically, the library gets a ton of copies of the book and hosts the selection's author in library branches around the city. It's an attempt to focus conversation and encourage civic discourse around the topic of a single novel.

Homegoing — a novel about two sisters born in eighteenth-century Ghana who live completely opposite lives — is a sensational choice, and a higher-profile selection than some of the recent Seattle Reads selections. The book has won awards from PEN and the National Book Critics Circle, and it was featured on many best-of-the-year lists. SPL says the book "illuminates slavery's troubled legacy both for those who were taken and those who stayed-and shows how the memory of captivity has been inscribed on the soul of our nation."

Copies of Homegoing and related book club materials will be available through Seattle Public Library in the middle of February. Gyasi will visit Seattle in May for a number of personal appearances. Get started on the book now so you can be a part of the conversation this spring.