Furlough’s Paradise

Sade and Mina grew up more like sisters than cousins—bound by blood, secrets, and the complicated love of a shared childhood. Now adults on vastly different journeys, they reunite under the weight of loss: the death of the woman who was both Sade’s mother and Mina’s aunt. Sade has been granted a brief furlough from prison to attend the funeral. Mina, untethered from her fast-paced life in California, is taking a pause she didn’t know she needed.

As the two women navigate the charged terrain of grief, family history, and long-buried trauma, their reunion becomes a reckoning. Memory, guilt, and resilience intertwine in a landscape shaped as much by what’s been said as what hasn’t. Told through richly poetic language and layered storytelling, Furlough’s Paradise is a poignant, powerful exploration of kinship, forgiveness, and the fragile path toward healing.