By Leslie Lindsay  ~WEDNESDAYS WITH WRITERS| ALWAYS WITH A BOOK: SPOTLIGHT~ 2019 NATIONAL BOOK AWARD WINNER 2019 JOHN LEONARD AWARD FOR BEST FIRST BOOK RECIPIENT & NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER I read THE YELLOW HOUSE (Grove/Atlantic, August 2019) with an eye toward memoir and a personal connection to one’s home, but this book is so much more than a memoir. It’s an examination of race and class, about the pull of home and family, and destruction. Set in a neglected area of New Orleans, the Yellow House was never much of a house in the first place–even before Katrina. But that’s not the point. In 1961, Sarah’s mother, Ivory Mae was a determined 19-year old widow. She invests her savings and little inheritance from her first husband into a little shotgun house in a once-promising neighborhood. She meets another man–Simon Broom–who will become the father of the author–but not for many years–and then he, too dies just six months after she is born. Broom takes the tale of this home and interweaves it with narrative …