Short book about the mermaid-ish descendants of pregnant Africans thrown over slave ships to die; their babies magically were born breathing water, with gills and fins. Most of them don’t know their history or even have specific long-term memories; Yetu is the historian, who holds memories for them. But the immensity and the horrors of those memories are killing Yetu. When Yetu abandons their post and meets humans, but leaves their people lost amidst the memories, they will have to decide what kind of person they are going to be—whether cycles of pain can be broken, or reinterpreted, or lived with and improved on. No one is perfect, but they are generally trying (even if that means imposing rules on how others should experience the world that end up doing harm, the way Yetu’s parent does). For me, it was too short to have the kind of impact that Solomon’s first book did. What I ended up focusing more on was the afterword attributed to the three non-Solomon authors, which explains that the book is based on a song that Diggs’ group did, which was itself based on the concept behind some instrumental music by another group; each has its own version of the tale, and Solomon’s isn’t taken in any direct way from the song. Nonetheless, and despite what the afterword says about shared stories and the importance of reinterpretation, the copyright page shows that the copyright is entirely in Diggs et al., not shared with Solomon (and if Solomon had just released this story on its own, there’s no way it would be an infringing derivative work of the song, although I respect the desire to share some credit). That sat badly with me.