24. Transcendent Kingdom (2020) by Yaa Gyasi Set at Stanford, Yaa Gyasi’s Transcendent Kingdom contains the only west coast campus on our list. Gifty is a PhD candidate studying the neuroscience of addiction and depression. She spends hours observing mice addicted to the nutritional drink Ensure in order to understand the different patterns of reward seeking behavior. The lab at the School of Medicine is as far as possible from rural Alabama, where she grew up attending an evangelical church with her Ghana-immigrant mother and brother. But her research is personal on two levels: her brother, Nana, was prescribed OxyContin after an ankle injury, struggled with addiction, and died of a heroin overdose before he graduated from high school. The Alabama church, whose congregation praised Nana's basketball abilities and treated him like a minor celebrity before his injury, whispered about their family, the white members convinced "their kind" had a taste for drugs and never suspecting that one of their own white youth group members was dealing. And yet when after Nana's death, Gifty's mother sinks into a deep depression, it's the pastor, whom she calls for help. Even as a child, she's confused by the church's judgement on one hand and words of comfort on the other. It mirrors the questioning way her child-self would poke holes in Bible stories: how long did Lazarus live after he was raised from the dead? Was he among us even today--an ancient vampire? How to reconcile religion with science? Creationism with evolution? Sixteen years later, she's still struggling with these questions. And when her mother slips into another deep depression and the pastor puts her on a plane to come stay with Gifty while she completes her PhD, Gifty will have to confront the past. Torn between science and faith, unanswered prayers and the promise of salvation, Gifty must learn to trust, to let other people in, and ask for help. ✔️ Set at a prestigious institution ✔️ Ambitious PhD candidate ✔️ A discipline re-defining discovery ✔️ Coming of age story