Helen Plum Library

In the aftermath of the Civil War, Josephine vows to rebuild her family's once-grand Virginia plantation. But in the face of such destruction, is redemption and faith in God possible? The difficult years of the Reconstruction era are brought to life by interweaving the stories of three women--daughter, mother, and freed slave--in a riveting tale

This book presents the way, in which African American women writers (Hannah Crafts, Zora Neale Hurston and Toni Morrison) have followed the spiritual endeavor of black Christianity as created by early nineteenth-century spiritual narratives to construct a sacred reading of the black female self. The sacred femininity that puts the ethics and aesthetics of African American women at the center of a certain mode of (African) Americanness relies on a...

"Set in the tumultuous year of 1968 in southern Virginia, a racially-charged murder case sets a duo of white and Black lawyers against a deeply unfair system as they work to defend their wrongfully-accused Black defendants. When two wealthy white landowners are found dead, the whole country immediately thinks it must be Jerome Washington, the hired help, who killed them. He was standing over the bodies when the police responded to an anonymous call...

"As the Civil War rages between the states, a courageous pair of spies plunge fearlessly into a maelstrom of ignorance, deceit, and danger, combining their unique skills to alter the course of history and break the chains of the past... Elle Burns is a former slave with a passion for justice and an eidetic memory. Trading in her life of freedom in Massachusetts, she returns to the indignity of slavery in the South--to spy for the Union Army. Malcolm...

"In the vein of Such a Fun Age, a whip-smart, compulsively readable novel about two upper-class stay-at-home mothers--one white, one Black--living in a "perfect" suburb that explores motherhood, friendship, and the true meaning of sisterhood amidst the backdrop of America's all-too-familiar racial reckoning. De'Andrea Whitman, her husband Malik, and their five-year-old daughter, Nina, are new to the upper-crust white suburb of Rolling Hills, Virginia--a...

"In the vein of The Engineer's Wife and Carolina Built, an inspiring novel based on the remarkable true story of Virginia's Black Wall Street and the indomitable Maggie Lena Walker, the daughter of a formerly enslaved woman who became the first Black woman to establish and preside over a bank in the United States"-- Maggie Lena Walker was ambitious and unafraid. Her childhood in 19th-century Virginia helping her mother with her laundry service opened...

"Meg is relaxing in the hammock, taste-testing Michael's latest batch of Arnold Palmers and watching the hummingbirds at their feeders when her hopes for a relaxing early summer morning are dashed. First her father recruits her to help him install a new batch of bees in the hive in her backyard. Then Mayor Shiffley recruits her to placate the NIMBYs (Not in my backyard), as she calls them - a group of newcomers to Caerphilly who have built McMansions...

In 1859 twelve-year-old Clotee, a house slave who must conceal the fact that she can read and write, records in her diary her experiences and her struggle to decide whether to escape to freedom