New York Times Bestselling Author
With empathy, grace, humor, and piercing insight, the
author of gods in Alabama pens a powerful, emotionally
resonant novel of the South that confronts the truth about
privilege, family, and the distinctions between perception
and reality—the stories we tell ourselves about our
origins and who we really are
“Joshilyn Jackson has literary super powers. In a story of
incredible love and bravery, she lasers through the
weathered grace and mossy tradition of the contemporary
south to explode its comic book dualism with blistering
genius. Leia Birch is the kind of character I love to read
about: she's funny, smart, and a mess, and I want her to
be my best friend. Her sassy heart, her inside-out family,
and the loyalty and love of those around her moved me to
cry, to laugh, and to think differently about what makes
‘us and them.’ Imagine Flannery O'Connor in a Wonder Woman
suit, and you'll get close to the big heart of this
brilliant book.”—Lydia Netzer, author of Shine Shine Shine
and How to Tell Toledo from the Night Sky
Superheroes have always been Leia Birch Briggs’ weakness.
One tequila-soaked night at a comics convention, the
usually level-headed graphic novelist is swept off her
barstool by a handsome and anonymous Batman.
It turns out the caped crusader has left her with more
than just a nice, fuzzy memory. She’s having a baby boy-an
unexpected but not unhappy development in the thirty-eight
year-old’s life. But before Leia can break the news of her
impending single-motherhood (including the fact that her
baby is biracial) to her conventional, Southern family,
her step-sister Rachel’s marriage implodes. Worse, she
learns her beloved ninety-year-old grandmother, Birchie,
is losing her mind, and she’s been hiding her dementia
with the help of Wattie, her best friend since girlhood.
Leia returns to Alabama to put her grandmother’s affairs
in order, clean out the big Victorian that has been in the
Birch family for generations, and tell her family that
she’s pregnant. Yet just when Leia thinks she’s got it all
under control, she learns that illness is not the only
thing Birchie’s been hiding. Tucked in the attic is a
dangerous secret with roots that reach all the way back to
the Civil War. Its exposure threatens the family’s freedom
and future, and it will change everything about how Leia
sees herself and her sister, her son and his missing
father, and the world she thinks she knows.
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