Inheritance of Silence

When Justine and Jiiba become engaged in 1964, they are a respected young Black couple with a promising future. But their lives begin to fracture the day their daughter is born: the child is unmistakably mixed-race. Humiliated and enraged, Jiiba swallows the scandal but marries Justine anyway-calculating that her family's wealth and standing are worth the disgrace. What follows is a lifetime of punishment.
For forty years, Justine endures a marriage built on resentment and control. Behind the façade of respectability, Jiiba rules the household through manipulation and cruelty, shaping a world in which silence becomes a condition of survival. Candice, the child at the center of this family fault line, grows up believing Jiiba is her father, never understanding why, among six siblings, she alone becomes the target of his contempt-or why love in her home always feels conditional.
When Justine dies suddenly in Cameroon, Candice returns home expecting grief. Instead, she is confronted with buried truths and the emotional violence that shaped her childhood. The silence her mother lived in now threatens to consume her as well. Spanning decades between Cameroon and France, Inheritance of Silence: The Quiet Tyranny of Respectable People is a haunting literary novel about identity, belonging, social hypocrisy, and the devastating cost of truths left unspoken. Inspired by true events.