The Temple of My Familiar

Alice Walker described this novel as "a romance of the last 500,000 years." It interweaves the stories of several characters: Arveyda, a musician searching for his past; his wife Carlotta, living in exile from her Latin American family; Suwelo, a Black history professor confronting how his generation of men has failed the women around him; Suwelo's estranged wife Fanny, who is about to meet her father for the first time; and Lissie, a woman who carries the memory of a thousand past lives.

Celie and Shug, the central characters of The Color Purple, appear here as minor, older figures, tying the book loosely to that earlier novel rather than continuing its plot directly.

Spanning continents and generations, the novel moves between contemporary relationships and a much longer, mythic history of race, gender, and the natural world. It is a sprawling, discursive book more concerned with ideas and connection across time than with a single central plot.