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Rolling In The Deep is a book about love and its various manifestations: romantic, enduring, unconditional, familial, friendship, and self-love, which are woven throughout the book. What is required of love? That was the question that Dinah asked on the third night of the Rodney King riots in 1992. Action was her answer and response. While Ambrose, in contrast, would decide that night that the cost of loving Dinah was, Too damn high.
Delray and his wife Dinah migrated from Louisiana like many other Southern African Americans in the 1960s, looking for a place where they could stand up straight and pursue a dream they thought was promised to all. Although the promised land didn't afford them the luxury of dreams, they found a special place in Los Angeles called the Florence-Graham or Florence-Firestone area. Later, it would be lumped into the general geography of South Central Los Angeles and often erroneously referred to as Watts. Within its 3.580 square miles, the story of Dinah, Ambrose, Indigo, and Onyx unfolds. Miss Lottie and her dog Roscoe come along for the ride. The story touches on how the neighborhood's changing demographics and shared history affect the place they call home. The book begins in 2010 with two devastating events happening on the same day. Indigo is sexually assaulted by her live-in boyfriend on the very day that her grandmother, Dinah, dies. These events begin the unraveling of love, trust, and a long-buried secret. When Indigo moved back to the old neighborhood and the home that her grandmother raised her in, strange things began to happen. She questions her role in the assault, her judgment, and her friendships, all while grieving and wondering if there's something evil in the house.
Ambrose was the group's sole survivor who came to Los Angeles in the 1960s. His wife Lucinda, his friend Delray, and now Dinah are all dead. Dinah, a woman he had loved longer than he had been married to his wife has just died. Her death made the promise he made in 1992 to keep her secret even more troubling. So, Ambrose solicits the help of his grandson Onyx to determine what Dinah's granddaughter intends to do with her house. As Onyx and Indigo become reacquainted, he keeps his grandfather apprised of her movements in hopes that no further action will be necessary. But when Indigo's dreams feel more like memories, and she is not the only one feeling a malevolent presence, Ambrose can no longer keep Dinah's secret. Indigo grapples with who she is and who her mother and grandmother were after adjusting the lens through which she saw them and herself. In the end, she asks herself what she wouldn't do for love and is shaken by her answer.
