Cover Stories: Powder Necklace by Nana Ekua Brew-Hammond

Nana Ekua Brew-Hammond's debut novel, Powder Necklace, follows London teenager Lila as she's sent to school in her native Ghana, then yanked back to London, and finally shipped off to New York -- all at her parents' whims. It's a book about dislocation and discovery, and Publishers Weekly says, "the beauty of the prose and the resilience of the heroine make this a winning debut." Plus, the book is gorgeous.

Here's Nana to tell the story behind the cover:

"For the cover, I envisioned a tin of powder laying on either a blank space or girl's dresser with powder spilling from it -- Ghana has these cool-looking vintage-esque tins of powder that I remember marveling at when I was in school there. I was also thinking a photographic treatment would be cool, in particular, a more literal representation of the title featuring a close-up of a girl's neck dusted with powder.

"My editor asked me what I was thinking in terms of the cover so I shared my ideas, which she was really into. I couldn't get her a good reference picture of the powder tin in time, but I did send her some images from my days in boarding school as a reference (that's Nana, right).

"I had a bit of anxiety when I got my cover. Seeing it made it real, and I had to ask myself if I could live with this image -- the cover of my first born book! -- FOREVA...."

Read the rest of Nana's Cover Story, and see an earlier version, at melissacwalker.com.