About this item
Based on the author's in-depth and award-winning research into archival sources at the Chief Vann House Historic Site in Chatsworth, Georgia, and the Moravian mission sponsored there in the early 1800s, Miles has blended this fascinating history with a contemporary cast of engaging and memorable characters, including Jinx, the free-spirited historian exploring her tribe's complicated racial history; Ruth, whose mother sought refuge from a troubled marriage in her beloved garden and the cosmetic empire she built from its bounty; Cheyenne, the Southern black debutante seeking to connect with a meaningful personal history; and, hovering above them all, the spirit of long-gone Mary Ann Battis, a young woman suspected of burning a mission to the ground and then disappearing from tribal records.
About the Author
Tiya Miles was born and raised in Cincinnati, Ohio, where most of her family still resides. She lives in Ann Arbor, Michigan on a tree-lined street with her husband, the academic psychologist Joseph Gone, their delightful twin daughters, and spirited 6-year-old son. Tiya's first book, Ties That Bind: The Story of an Afro-Cherokee Family in Slavery and Freedom, was published by the University of California Press in 2005 and received four awards from historical, humanities, American studies, and Native American studies associations, including the Frederick Jackson Turner prize from the Organization of American Historians for the best first book in American history and recognition from the Native American and Indigenous Studies Association as one of the ten most influential books of the first decade of the twenty-first century. She is also the author of The House on Diamond Hill: A Cherokee Plantation Story, published by the University of North Carolina Press in 2010, which was awarded three historical book prizes including the best book award from the National Council on Public History. Miles is the co-editor, with Sharon P. Holland, of Crossing Waters, Crossing Worlds: The African Diaspora in Indian Country (2006) and has published various personal essays on race, feminism and identity as well as academic articles on women's history and black and Native interrelated experience. In 2011, she was the recipient of a MacArthur Foundation Fellowship.
