Francine Thomas Howard Knihy

It is 1913, shortly before the start of the First World War, and Annalaura is alone again. Her gambling, womanizing husband has left the plot they sharecrop in rural Tennessee--why or for how long she does not know. Without food or money and with her future tied to the fate of the season's tobacco crop, Annalaura struggles to raise her four children. When help comes in the form of an amorous landowner, who is she to turn it--and him--away? In this remarkable first novel, as bracingly original as it is exquisitely rendered, Francine Howard tells a moving story of American desire and ambition and the tragic, slippery boundaries of race under Jim Crow. "Based on a true family story, this haunting first novel admirably revisits a painful time in history. Too often historical novels about women indulge in anachronistic explorations of feminism, but this novel admirably avoids that trap and instead portrays realistic characters dealing with their difficult lot in life." --Booklist

Three sisters navigate the horrors of the Middle Passage in a powerful historical novel about family, honor, and the will to live by the author of The Daughter of Union County. Timbuktu, western Africa, 1706. Folashade, the fourteen-year-old daughter of a professor of linguistics, is sent south with her older sisters, Bibi and Adaeze, to endure the painful ceremony that a girl on the cusp of womanhood is expected to. In Djenné, on the banks of the Niger, the sisters' fate and that of their fellow Bambara is changed forever when they're kidnapped, marched toward grueling indignities on Gorée Island, and eventually hauled aboard an English slaver bound for the Americas. Before they are inevitably separated, Folashade, Bibi, and Adaeze plot to keep their memories alive. Drawing from her ancestry, Francine Thomas Howard gives an authentic voice to the horrors of the Middle Passage--and an empowered one to a girl who is determined to survive, to honor her father and Timbuktu, and to ensure that her and her sisters' names will never be forgotten.

Fourteen years after the end of slavery, Lord Henry Hardin and his wife, Lady Bertha, enjoy an entitled life in Union County, Arkansas. Until he faces a devastating reality: Bertha is unable to bear children. If Henry doesn't produce an heir, the American branch of his family name will die out. So Henry, desperate to preserve his aristocratic family lineage, does the unthinkable. When Salome, a former slave and Henry's mistress, gives birth to a white-skinned, blue-eyed daughter, Henry orders a reluctant Lady Bertha to claim the child as their own...allowing young Margaret to pass into the white world of privilege. As Margaret grows older, unaware of her true parentage, devastating circumstances threaten to shroud her in pain and shame...but then, ultimately, in revelation. Despite rumors about Margaret's true identity, Salome is determined to transform her daughter's bitter past into her secure future while Henry goes to extraordinary lengths to protect his legacy. Spanning decades and generations, marked by tragedy and redemption, this unforgettable saga illuminates a family's fight for their name, for survival, and for true freedom.