Black Pansies by Marlene F. Cheng

Fiza, an adoptee from South Sudan, finds accepting and giving love impossible.

Although she has everything a young lady would desire–a supportive family and friends, a rewarding career, a well-appointed turret, where she lives independently–she feels empty.

The why she intuits hides in a dark cave in her heart’s memory.

With great courage, she embarks on a treacherous journey home, hoping to find answers and to free herself for everlasting love, her deepest yearning.
The tension between the romantic hoped-for and the inevitably starker reality palpates.