Novelist wonders whether you can have a happy relationship when your parents’ was awful

Nana Ekua Brew-Hammond’s new novel, “My Parents’ Marriage,” spins endlessly on this hypothetical question: If our parents’ marriage is often a blueprint for how to navigate future relationships, what happens when that marriage, marred by repeated infidelity and estrangement, leaves much to be desired?

For Kokui, the novel’s young, Ghanaian protagonist, the result is emotional turbulence, with one knotty circumstance after another spooling out in an otherwise conventional plot.

The novel opens just before Christmas in 1972 at Accra’s Ambassador Hotel ballroom, where beautiful young women and monied, military men, many of them married, mingle in a celebratory atmosphere. In attendance because of her father’s wealth and status, Kokui retreats to the veranda to get some air and smoke a cigarette. There, with anxious thoughts about the future, she meets a young man named Boris. The encounter, brief but memorable, will change the trajectory of Kokui’s life, mainly for the better.

But first, there is the demoralizing situation of Kokui’s parents’ marriage, with its ensuing “lakes of sadness.” From about 1941 to 1974, Mawuli, Kobui’s father, married six times and fathered about 12 children, some with women he never wed. Kokui’s mother, Micheline, is Mawuli’s fourth wife, but, having left him for obvious reasons, she resides across the border in Togo, her home country.

In a patriarchal society where women suffer many disadvantages, Micheline refuses to divorce Mawuli, believing daughters Kokui and Nami, who visit often, will benefit from their father’s wealth. And they do, to an extent. In fact, the evening after that holiday party Kokui and Nami are driven to Mawuli’s large house to live with their father’s fifth wife and a young sibling from yet another affair.

Traumatized by the “devastation of abrupt, cataclysmic upheaval” from her childhood, Kokui is desperate to break away from her philandering father’s heavy influence. She sees a way out in her growing love for Boris, who is ambitious and faithful but often presents as a one-note character in the novel. He’s inflexible and a tad dull — not at all like printing mogul Mawuli, who is surprisingly complex and writ large.

Eventually, Kokui marries Boris and they move to America, where they both plan to attend community college. Reminiscent of scenes from Imbolo Mbue’s best-selling “Behold the Dreamers,” the last half of the novel tracks the ups and downs of the couple’s new life as immigrants. There are fights over family and finances as Kokui flexes her autonomy and sense of independence. By the time shocking news forces the couple back to Accra, we are, like Kokui, a little wiser (“every marriage is its own thing”) but also road weary.

“You think harmony happens just because two things have come together? No. The two parties have to do what they can to prevent a collision! You have to be alert. You have to keep your hands on the wheel and steer.” In her novel, soul-searching with a pragmatic edge, Ghanaian writer Brew-Hammond reminds us that these sensible words by Kokui’s long-suffering mother — whose marriage is never far from Kokui’s mind — are easier said than done.

Angela Ajayi is a Minneapolis-based writer and critic.

My Parents’ Marriage

By: Nana Ekua Brew-Hammond.

Publisher: Amistad, 288 pages, $28.99.