A conversation with Dolen Perkins-Valdez

Name: A conversation with Dolen Perkins-Valdez
Start: 2025-04-22T19:00:00-04:00
End: 2025-04-22T20:00:00-04:00
Location: 1876 South Green Road, South Euclid, OH 44121

Schedule

Tue Apr 22 2025 at 07:00 pm to 08:00 pm

UTC-04:00

Location

1876 South Green Road, South Euclid, OH 44121 | South Euclid, OH

Join us at our South Euclid-Lyndhurst Branch for a conversation with Dolen Perkins-Valdez, author of "Happy Land."
Register: https://attend.cuyahogalibrary.org/event/12920333
Perkins-Valdez is the New York Times bestselling author of "Wench" (2010), "Balm" (2015), and most recently "Take My Hand" (2022) which was named a Most Anticipated Book of 2022 by Newsweek, San Francisco Chronicle, Essence, NBC News, and elsewhere. Amazon named Take My Hand one of the Top 20 Books of 2022. The novel was awarded a 2023 NAACP Image Award for Outstanding Literary Work, Silver Gavel Award from the American Bar Association, and Fiction Award from Black Caucus of the American Library Association. It has been longlisted for the Mark Twain American Voice in Literature Award. A three-time nominee for a United States Artists Fellowship, Dolen is widely considered a pre-eminent chronicler of American historical life. She is Associate Professor in the MFA Program at American University in Washington, DC.
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.
Nikki hasn’t seen her grandmother in years, due to a mysterious estrangement inherited from her mother. So when the elder calls out of the blue with an urgent request for Nikki to visit her in the hills of western North Carolina, Nikki hesitates only for a moment. After years of silence in her family, she’s determined to learn the truth while she still can.
But instead of answers about the recent past, Mother Rita tells Nikki an incredible story of a kingdom on this very mountain, and of her great-great-great grandmother, Luella, who would become 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, and the lives of those who dwelled in the ruins she discovers in the woods, the more she realizes how much of her identity and her family’s secrets are wrapped up in these hills. Because this land is their legacy, and it will be up to her to protect it before it, like so much else, is stolen away.
📕 Books will be available for purchase and signing courtesy of Mac's Backs - Books on Coventry.