Happy Land by Dolen Perkins-Valdez (audiobook)

 genre: historical fiction

Nikki‘s relationship with her grandmother isn’t just complicated, it is more like nonexistent. So when she gets a call that Grandma Rita needs her down in North Carolina Nikki decides to take a leap and visit her. It is on this visit that Nikki learns the history of her family and its connection to a remarkable group of formerly enslaved folks who walked to a land that they could not just call Home, but rule for themselves.

This story is told in two timelines as we learn both about Nikki and her experiences with her grandmother as well as the life of their ancestor, the Queen of the kingdom that these tenacious and innovative settlers created. It is a story about land and how your life can get tied to it, about the beauty of working land that is your own and the wealth it can spread to your descendants. It is about strong women and the way that they are always required to sacrifice so much to survive. It is about connections between generations and the power of knowing where we come from.

The dual narration from the audiobook is quite good and more than once a turn of phrase struck me as particularly beautiful. Some of the real estate legal thread felt a little too simple to me but the discussion about land being stolen from Black owners and given over to white families is so important to modern conversations about privilege. I was sometimes a little bored by each timeline but I’m glad I stuck with it.