Some love stories are defined by how long two people have together. Others are defined by what remains after that time is taken away.
In Ian Hanes’s August: We Carry What We Bury, the relationship between August Harper and Rosalind Rose, the boy who sees her differently from everyone else, forms one of the novel’s most emotional threads. Their connection begins quietly in 1970s Kansas, in a small community where everyone watches, everyone whispers and some boundaries are enforced without ever needing to be written down.
Rose is a Black teenage girl living in a place where she is constantly reminded that she is different. August is a white farm boy, a gifted basketball player whose future appears to be opening before him. On the surface, their lives should move in completely different directions.
Instead, they find each other.
Their relationship develops in small moments rather than dramatic declarations. Rose watches August practice basketball. He stays behind a little longer so they can talk. They exchange glances at school when no one is paying attention. They discuss ambitions, books, politics and the lives they hope to build. Rose dreams of becoming a civil rights lawyer and changing her corner of the world. August encourages her to imagine something even bigger.
These ordinary moments become especially powerful because both teenagers understand that being seen together may invite gossip and judgment. Their affection exists in the spaces between what their community expects and what they themselves feel.
Then comes 1977.
August and the Lebanon Bronchos are chasing a state basketball championship. The town is alive with excitement and Rose desperately wants to see the game. She is delayed, catches a later bus and runs toward the arena hoping she can still arrive in time.
She never reaches it.
Rose is struck by a car and killed while August is inside experiencing what should have been one of the greatest moments of his young life. The Bronchos win, but when August learns that a girl has died, he immediately searches the crowd for Rose. Her usual seat is empty.
From that moment forward, victory and grief become inseparable.
August turns away from opportunities that might have carried him beyond Lebanon. The boy with the basketball scholarship future stays on the farm and Rose’s death becomes one of the invisible weights he carries through adulthood. He visits her unmarked grave quietly, year after year. He does not need anyone else to understand why.
That is where the title We Carry What We Bury takes on its deepest meaning.
The novel suggests that burying someone does not necessarily mean leaving them behind. People remain with us through memory, regret, love, unanswered questions and the choices we make because they once existed.
Ian Hanes does not present Rose and August simply as a tragic teenage romance. Their story becomes a meditation on what love leaves behind when life refuses to provide a happy ending.
And perhaps that is why Rose truly becomes the girl August never forgot.
Discover the story of love, memory, history and everything we carry in Ian Hanes’s August: We Carry What We Bury.
Available now on Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0H3M2GCJJ/
