Traveling from Lagos, Nigeria, to Sugar Land, Texas, Ikemefuna anticipates her newly arranged marriage and all-American life, but discovers a demanding household under the constant scrutiny of her new in-laws and a marriage facing generational cycles of pain and silence.
"Twisted and intense, this marvelous debut novel transforms from a domestic drama into a story of secrecy and survival you cant put down." The Philadelphia Inquirer
When Ikemefuna is put on a plane from Lagos to Texas, she anticipates her newly arranged All-American life: a handsome husband, a beautiful red-brick mansion in Sugar Land, pizza parlors, and dance classes.
Desperate to please, shell happily cater to her familys needs. But Ikemefuna soon discovers what it actually means to live with her in-laws. Demands for a grandson grow urgent, her every move comes under scrutiny, and the America she imagined from Nigeria shimmers almost as distantly through the locked windows of the Sugar Land house, unattainable. As Ikemefuna finds theres no way out, her new husband Nna, a corporate attorney, grapples with the influence of his parents against his own increasing affection for her, juggling their deeply traditional expectations with his own.
As family secrets boil to the surface, Ikemefuna must decide how to scrape herself out of an impossibly sticky situation: a marriage succumbing to generational cycles of pain and silence. In the end, she may be carrying the greatest secret of all. An unforgettably delicious thriller, House Woman is about a woman trapped in a dangerous web of conflicting desires, melting in the Texas heat.
