About this item
A woman learns the astonishing truth of her family's ties to a vanished American Kingdom in this riveting new novel from the New York Times bestselling, NAACP Image Award-winning author of Take My Hand.. Nikki Berry hasn't seen her grandmother in years, due to a mysterious estrangement inherited from her mother. So when the elder calls out of the blue with an urgent request for Nikki to visit her in the hills of western North Carolina, Nikki hesitates only for a moment. After years of silence in her family, she's determined to learn the truth while she still can.. But instead of answers about the recent past, Mother Rita tells Nikki an incredible story of a kingdom on this very mountain, and of her great-great-great grandmother, Luella, who would become its queen.
About the Author
Dolen Perkins-Valdez is the author of the New York Times bestselling novel Wench. *USA Today* called the book "deeply moving" and "beautifully written." *People* called it "a devastatingly beautiful account of a cruel past." *O, The Oprah Magazine* chose it as a Top Ten Pick of the Month, and NPR named it a top 5 book club pick of 2010. Dolen's fiction has appeared in The Kenyon Review, StoryQuarterly, StorySouth, and elsewhere. In 2011, she was a finalist for two NAACP Image Awards and the Hurston-Wright Legacy Award for fiction. She was also awarded the First Novelist Award by the Black Caucus of the American Library Association. Dolen received a DC Commission on the Arts Grant for her second novel BALM. Early reviews are unanimously positive. Publishers Weekly writes "Her spare, lyrical voice is unsentimental yet compassionate." Library Journal writes "No sophomore slump is in evidence here. Readers who were captivated by Perkins-Valdez's first novel, Wench, will be intrigued by the post-Civil War lives of three Southern transplants to Chicago." Dolen teaches in the Stonecoast MFA program in Maine and is a popular guest for Black History and Women's Month programs. A graduate of Harvard and a former University of California President's Postdoctoral Fellow at UCLA, Dolen lives in Washington, DC with her family.
