Her mother, Opal, is dealing with a bevy of issues, and Cinnamon takes inspiration from the other adults in her life: her grandparents, Redwood and Aidan, “theater people” who’ve traveled the world and who do hoodoo Redwood’s sister Iris, an Oberlin professor obsessed with textiles who writes Cinnamon letters (and who wrote Sekou, too) and Star Deer, dancer extraordinaire and substitute math teacher. Cinnamon is lonely and fits in nowhere-she’s smart and observant, which means she tends to ask questions and voice opinions that people don’t like, and “theatrically challenged” (which means that she’s too tall and too heavy to be cast in plays, even though she’s a powerhouse). The second narrative, which is set in the 1890s and moves through parts of West Africa, France, and America, is contained within a mysterious book called The Chronicles that Cinnamon spends much of her narrative reading. One of these is set in 1980s Pittsburgh, where Cinnamon Jones has to cope with the recent suicide of her brother, Sekou. Andrea Hairston’s Will Do Magic for Small Change alternates between two narratives, both of which are full enough to be their own novels.
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