Dele Weds Destiny

Chapter 1

Enitan

I think they ve lost our luggage, Enitan announced to Remi. They both watched the only item left on the carousel a haggard, haphazardly taped Ghana-Must-Go bag make yet another turn.

Well, Remi said, and then she looked at her mother and they both began giggling, the unfettered, unhinged laughter of the exhausted. Their journey from New York to Lagos had been a chaotic one. Remi was supposed to have spent the night with her mother in Enitan s new apartment in Jamaica, Queens, where Enitan now lived since she had moved out of the family s two-bedroom Park Slope apartment. But Remi had decided to take the train to Queens instead that morning, slowing them down considerably.

Even when she and Remi had finally managed to get a car, they had had to endure a two-hour-long wait to get through security at JFK because everyone, it seemed, was desperate to go somewhere warm two weeks before Christmas. Then they had another three-hour wait when they got to Heathrow because their flight to Lagos had been delayed. Now, at last, they had arrived, tired, hungry, and apparently without luggage.

Still, it was good that Enitan and Remi were laughing together. That Remi had even agreed to come had been somewhat unexpected. Since Enitan and Charles had announced their intention to separate, Remi, nineteen years old, had reverted back to a younger, more beleaguered self; her eyes had rapidly filled with tears when they had sat her down and first told her the news. They had not expected her to take it so hard. In truth the divorce had been a long time coming. Remi s departure for college had clarified that yes, this man Enitan had abruptly and dramatically left Nigeria for, while she loved him and always would in the familial sense (he was the father of her child after all), he was no longer someone she could envision spending the rest of her life with certainly not as husband and wife. In many ways, it felt like a miracle that they had been together as

Tomi Obaro

Loving and lively . . . the writing takes on a political power . . . indelible . . . bravura." The New York Times Book Review

Fast-paced, glamorous, and bursting with emotion, Dele Weds Destiny is a thrilling debut. The bonds between women as friends, and across the generations are the jewels that make this story shine. Tayari Jones, author of An American Marriage

This enchanting debut is an affectionate portrait of three women at middle age, cannily exploring the ways the self is forged in youth. With an admirably light touch, Tomi Obaro documents how class, race, faith, and power define the lives of women in Nigeria and America, past and present. Rumaan Alam, author of Leave the World Behind

Tomi Obaro has a true gift for honoring the details that illuminate our most human tensions ... Dele Weds Destiny is a black diamond of a debut. Saeed Jones, author of How We Fight for Our Lives

Tomi Obaro has given us a wonderful novel full of richly-drawn, complicated, nuanced characters all trying to love and connect with each other. An ode to the bonds of friendship across decades, Dele Weds Destiny is a marvelous debut. Jami Attenberg, author of The Middlesteins

Dele Weds Destiny is, among a great many other things, such a generous and patient consideration of life, and of lives. Tomi Obaro is such a skilled writer, with an eye towards the vivid and vivacious moments that others might dismiss as stillness. I am so thankful for the world of this book, and so excited for everyone who gets to sit in it. Hanif Abdurraqib, author of They Can't Kill Us Until They Kill Us

Obaro writes beautifully about the complicated labor of friendship and parentage. Dele Weds Destiny explores caregiving as a kind of deferment, but also as discovery, of desire, of fury, of home. Raven Leilani, author of Luster

An engrossing read with strong characters and a clear portrait of Nigeria then and now . .