'A beautiful and immensely powerful book about love grief and finding a way to be in a forever
altered world' J ulia Samuel 'The Flower Bearers goes to some dark places but there is joy
too . . . simultaneously a love story a portrait of sisterhood and a visceral depiction of
violence loss and emotional devastation' Guardian On September 24 2021 Rachel Eliza
Griffiths married her husband the novelist Salman Rushdie. On the same day hundreds of miles
away her closest friend Kamilah Aisha Moon who was expected to speak at the wedding died
suddenly. Eleven months later as Rachel Eliza was learning to exist without her a brutal
attack nearly killed her husband. As trauma compounded trauma Rachel Eliza realized that to
survive her heartbreak she would need to mourn not only her friend but the woman she had been
on her wedding day. And so Rachel Eliza chronicles her seventeen years of friendship with
Aisha. From the moment they met in a college library she knew she had found a soul sister.
Their life together was filled with music: they danced to records in their apartments and
skipped from one sticky jazz bar to another. Sitting side-by-side at poetry circles reading
Toni Morrison and Alice Walker marching through Harlem protesting lost Black lives Rachel
Eliza drew inspiration and strength from her friend. Together they learnt to embrace themselves
as writers artists and Black women. Rachel Eliza interweaves this love story with another
that of her relationship with Rushdie of the challenges they have faced and the depth of their
connection. Celebrating the ways that these two extraordinary people have transformed her life
she reflects on the beauty and pain that come with opening oneself fully to love.
