![]() ![]() ![]() The Freemans arrive at their forbidding new home, a large gated pile with a plaque reading “The Toneybee Institute for Ape Research, established 1929.” They quickly realize that all the hostile and creepily solicitous employees of the place are white. “We Love You, Charlie Freeman” takes its title from the wildly optimistic words that go with the picture. But Callie draws a greeting card of the newly configured Freeman family that features four humans and one hairy hominid with a tail. (They are well qualified to communicate with the chimp because they are fluent in sign language.) In the book’s first scene, the Freeman daughters, 9-year-old Callie and 14-year-old Charlotte, do a little wailing about this relocation. All they have to do is get used to living with a fifth family member, who happens to be a chimpanzee. ![]() ![]() Why? Because Laurel Freeman, the headstrong mother, has agreed to make herself, her husband and their two daughters part of a research project. with its predominantly black schools, where the toilet paper is rationed - to a mansion in an all-white part of the Berkshires. They have agreed to move from their home in Dorchester, Mass. The four members of the black Freeman family are about to become fish out of water. Kaitlyn Greenidge’s terrifically auspicious debut novel, “We Love You, Charlie Freeman,” begins with a deceptively high-concept premise. ![]()
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