Tags
1953, artists, Black life, book review, child rebellion, desires, family drama, Fillmore, historical fiction, lack of back story, Margaret Wilkerson Sexton, mother-daughter relationships, racism, San Francisco, sibling rivalry, singers, strong characterizations
Review: On the Roof Top, by Margaret Wilkerson Sexton
HarperCollins, 2022. 290 pp. $29
San Francisco, 1953. Vivian Jones, who fled Louisiana because the Ku Klux Klan murdered her father, has a plan. Widowed mother of three daughters, who range in age from twenty to twenty-four, Vivian has decided that they will become professional singers, a trio. The Salvations, she calls them, and they’re a favorite act at the clubs in the Fillmore, their Black neighborhood.
But Vivian wants stardom for her girls, capital S—nothing less will do—so she’s hoping and praying a talent manager she knows will shepherd the Salvations to the big time. She’s also counting on her children to do whatever it takes, whether it’s the hours of practice on the rooftop of their building or keeping their eyes front and center on the dream.

The Fillmore Auditorium, renamed in 1954, has been an important venue in San Francisco for arts and music since its construction in 1912 as the Majestic (courtesy Wikimedia Commons; public domain)
However, children don’t do what their parents plan for them, and Vivian has never bothered to ask Ruth, Esther, or Chloe what they want. Rather, she’s imposed her will with a discipline a drill sergeant would envy and noted their progress—when it occurs—with satisfaction. The reader knows long before she does that her vision of salvation isn’t theirs; the daughters get the chance to have their own narratives in the novel, but not out loud in Mama’s hearing.
Ruth, attending nursing school like her mother before her, has a boyfriend to whom she’s more attached than Vivian knows. Esther works at a bookstore, where she reads voraciously and thinks about world problems, especially what it means to be Black in a country where white people have the power. Chloe, the baby at twenty, hasn’t found her niche yet, but you sense that when she does, this most dutiful of the daughters will no longer deserve that description.
What’s more, the City Council wants to take over the Fillmore, knock down the buildings, and kick out the residents. Pressure builds slowly for Vivian and her neighbors to sell out and leave. What a crushing blow that is, yet—perhaps surprisingly—Vivian pays little heed to the threat. But Esther does.
On the Roof Top takes a while to move; it’s not clear right away what the novel’s about, or where it’s going. Part of the problem, I think, is that despite the lovingly detailed characterizations of four women, there’s little backstory to ground the reader. Hints and allusions from the past help lock in the present, but few actual scenes, so it took time for me to grasp the characters and become invested in their futures.
Even so, I urge you to stay with this first-rate family drama. Sexton has written a full-fledged family, something that all too few novelists succeed at, with each daughter recognizably different. Each has to work around her domineering mother, and how that happens makes a worthy tale. They may not have defined their dreams yet, but they know instinctively to balance their search for whatever that is against their loyalty to Vivian, to the Salvations, and, to a lesser extent, to their siblings.
I like how Sexton depicts their rivalries, which can be fierce; in general, she sugarcoats nothing. The Fillmore as a neighborhood may seem idealized. But the author has re-created a slice of a big city that feels like a world unto itself, with eccentric characters, resentments, caring, and inertia, and that’s true to life.
Vivian’s the force to the story, though, as you would surmise:
Yes, Vivian had trained those girls as furiously as she’d twisted the cotton from the bolls back home. But it would all be worth it one day. . . . There wasn’t a day that went by that she didn’t envision the reward, the baby blue Cadillac, the mink coats, the diamonds in her ears nearly the size of her fists. She wouldn’t need to stand between a white woman’s legs urging her to push out a child that would grow up just to tear her down. She wouldn’t need to inform the new mothers that she wasn’t there to mind the babies, only to keep them alive.
She lets the passion she pours into the Salvations consume her at the expense of her own desires. She misses her late husband daily, and though her mutual attraction to the widower preacher at her church prompts jokes and knowing smiles in the Fillmore, Vivian’s afraid to love again. That would make her vulnerable to loss. Instead, she tries to construct a family impervious to such losses and to demands that would tax her dignity and that of her children. I can see that.
What doesn’t fit is how this controlling, somewhat self-absorbed mother handles her daughters’ rebellions. I don’t want to give too much away, but she turns inward rather than explode, suddenly becoming emotionally pained and vulnerable, when she’s built her life on preventing that. It’s as if Sexton, having pulled few punches through the novel, pulls this one, maybe seduced by the notion of redeeming Vivian. I’m not sure that’s plausible.
Even so, On the Roof Top is a wonderful book, and I recommend it.
Disclaimer: I obtained my reading copy of this book from the public library.