Description

‘Exactly the novel we need right here, right now’ TAYARI JONES

‘Astonishing’ JODI PICOULT

‘Exhilarating’ CHARMAINE WILKERSON

A woman learns the astonishing truth of her family’s ties to a vanished American Kingdom in this riveting new novel from the bestselling and award-winning author of Take My Hand
Nikki Berry hasn’t seen her grandmother Rita in years. When she calls out of the blue asking Nikki to visit her urgently in the hills of North Carolina, Nikki hesitates only for a moment. Her mother and grandmother have long been estranged, and after years of silence in her family, Nikki is determined to learn the truth while she still can.

But instead of answers about the recent past, Mother Rita tells Nikki the incredible story of a kingdom on this very mountain, and of her great-great-great grandmother, Luella, who became its queen.

It sounds like the makings of a fairy tale – royalty among a community of freed people. But the more Nikki learns about the Kingdom of the Happy Land, the more she realizes how much of her identity and her family’s secrets are contained in these hills. Because this land is their legacy, and it is up to her to protect it before – like so much else – it is stolen away.

Inspired by true events, Happy Land is a transporting multi-generational novel about the stories that shape us and the dazzling courage it takes to dream.

Publisher Review

What a story! Happy Land is an exhilarating tale of perseverance, identity, and love that echoes across generations. This story of formerly enslaved families in the Blue Ridge Mountains who built a community against all odds will stay with me for a long time — Charmaine Wilkerson, New York Times bestselling author of BLACK CAKE Picture a time when a kingdom existed inside the confines of the Carolinas – a time when freedpeople were royalty. What if that was your history, instead of the trauma of enslavement and generational poverty? As Dolen Perkins-Valdez says in this astonishing, historical-based novel – a family tree isn’t just something you draw on paper. It’s only when you’re rooted in the soil that your family once inhabited that your imagination can brush the sky — Jodi Picoult, #1 New York Times bestselling author of BY ANY OTHER NAME