Virginia Pye’s latest novel, Marriage and Other Monuments, is set in the summer of 2020, as social justice protests and the removal of Confederate monuments shake the city of Richmond, Virginia, as the marriages of two estranged sisters fall apart. Cynthia’s divorce from husband, Bobby is precipitated by his financial misdeeds. Melissa, her sister, is so committed to activism that she becomes alienated from her Black husband. As tensions rise, the sisters turn to one another.