The Human Origins of Beatrice Porter and Other Essential Ghosts (Catapult), Soraya Palmer’s debut novel, focuses on sisters Zora and Sasha Porter, both of whom are estranged from their melded Trinidadian and Jamaican heritage. The sisters’ parents kept numerous secrets, none of them easily explained: Zora and Sasha navigate layers of suppressed trauma in order to get to the heart of their own identities. Palmer’s novel doesn’t evade the haunting capacity of the immediate past, nor does it hide from the intergenerational morass of parent-child bonds. The novel impressively homes in on the specific challenges facing diaspora Caribbean youth, who straddle multiple states of being.