Literary & Contemporary Fiction
The Names We Kept
Some names are inherited. Others must be reclaimed.
A family can survive the past without ever escaping the names it left behind.
Across generations, names are changed, withheld, remembered, and carried by people who understand that identity is never only personal. What begins as a search through family history becomes a confrontation with the silences that shaped the present.
The Names We Kept is a literary novel about inheritance, belonging, and the stories families preserve when the truth is too difficult to say aloud.
Brian R. Smith 