About this item
Born with magical hands, Madge has the power to discern others' suffering, but she cannot heal her own damaged heart.Sadie can commune with the dead, but until she makes peace with her father, she cannot fully engage her gift.Searching for his missing family, Hemp arrives in a northern city that shimmers with possibility.In the bitter aftermath of a terrible, bloody war, as a divided nation tries to come together once again, Madge, Sadie, and Hemp will be caught up in a desperate, unexpected battle for survival in a community desperate to lay the pain of the past to rest. --This text refers to an alternate Audio CD edition.
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.
