Historical Trauma

Finding your place in a family tree that has only one branch, the other shorn by the Holocaust, is a tricky business. Gail Weiss Gaspar grew up believing that her worth was tied to busyness and productivity, with achievement and education prized above all other accomplishments.

What if the villain of your childhood turned out to be someone really rather extraordinary? A disgraced politician, Sir James Hastings is living out his retirement in a secluded Surrey village. He is unmoved by his centenarian mother's death - a woman he emotionally buried upon her abandonment. Raised by his father, a charismatic war-hero turned racing driver, the young James, torn between self-blame and longing, eventually dismissed her.

Lottie Rebecca Lee is spoken into the world in Fayetteville, North Carolina, by a Black nurse who declares, “Lord Jesus, if that ain’t the blackest little baby born this side of heaven.” Later, Lottie will prove that she is the ancestors’ promise to unearth the Mississippi and Ghanaian atrocities that have tormented Benjamin Lee, her grandfather who was born during the Great Depression in Mississippi’s red clay tobacco fields, and Benjamin Junior, his son and Lottie Rebecca’s father, born in Fayetteville, North Carolina, where the post Korean War GI Bill promises prosperity.

A coming-of-age middle grade novel about three best friends born in the wake of Hurricane Katrina who must confront storms of their own 12 years later, from a National Book Award winning author. Born in the wake of Hurricane Katrina, Greer, Joya Mia, and Kiki are seventh graders and the best of...