Jide Familoni

The Rachel Project Jide Familoni

Prior to COVID-19 illness, fault lines and divisions within the nation were already evident. The Rachel Project employs the story of a struggling immigrant scientist on the trail of an elusive illness that is attacking some of society's highest performers to explore the institutionalized fracture lines. It is the story of a Black man who appears as just a shadow of himself, on a cross, and between a Black woman and a White woman. The cross is sharpened to fashion it into a stake with a snake coiled around it - the international symbol of medicine and diseases. That Christian cross and stake also impales the forbidden fruit, depicting how religion frowns on permissive sexuality. With a real illness raging, the novel injects three-dimensional characters into the fault lines even as they are pushed and pulled by religion, politics, and relationships. Just like the disease, divisiveness kills in a hundred different ways.