African American Historical Fiction

The Roux in the Gumbo is an emotional and inspirational drama, telling the story of a Louisiana family spanning the generations from the era of slavery to the present day. You will hear of the romances, challenges, and adventures they experience as their lives are intertwined by one common goal - basic survival during the Reconstruction era in Louisiana.

Baxter’s name isn’t George. But it’s 1929, and Baxter is lucky enough, as a Black man, to have a job as a sleeping car porter on a train that crisscrosses the country. So when the passengers call him George, he has to just smile and nod and act invisible. What he really wants is to go to dentistry school, but he’ll have to save up a lot of nickel and dime tips to get there, so he puts up with “George.” On this particular trip out west, the passengers are more unruly than usual, especially when the train is stalled for two extra days.

On a sweltering summer night in 1925, beauties in beaded dresses mingle with hepcats in dapper suits on the streets of Harlem. The air is thick with reefer smoke, and jazz pours out of speakeasy doorways. Ben Charles and his devoted wife, Angeline, are among the locals crammed into a basement club to hear jazz and drink bootleg liquor. For aspiring poet Ben, the swirling, heady rhythms are a revelation. So is Baby Back Johnston, an ambitious trumpet player who flashes a devilish grin and blasts jazz dynamite from his horn.

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.

Mr. Washington was born a slave. His family, freed after the Civil War, struggled for a livelihood under terrible conditions. Mr. Washington, however, was determined to be educated, and he took advantage of every opportunity to learn available to him. He rose from poverty and ignorance to help found Tuskegee University. This audiobook should be an inspiration to all who listen.

A powerful story about love, courage, sacrifice, resilience, and hope, True Grace, set in 1924 during the Harlem Renaissance and Roaring Twenties, chronicles the journey of an immigrant, mixed-raced woman from the Congo, England, and Jamaica, fighting for her family's survival. Inspired by real people and events, Grace must navigate the misogyny and racism of the courts, banks, child welfare system, and bad actors to hold her family together. Calling on her grit, determination, and grace, she must overcome harrowing circumstances.

In this singular collection, John Edgar Wideman, the acclaimed author of Writing to Save a Life, blends the personal, historical, and political to invent complex, charged stories about love, death, struggle, and what we owe each other. With characters ranging from everyday Americans to Jean-Michel Basquiat to Nat Turner, American Histories is a journey through time, experience, and the soul of our country. Navigating an extraordinary range, Wideman challenges the boundaries of traditional forms, and delivers unforgettable, narratives that touch the core of what it means to be alive.

Sloan had a hard enough time being a female bounty hunter in the West. With only her trusty steed Whiskey by her side, she went through town after town writing wrongs. Her methods worked well until she encountered the Franklin brothers terrorizing the women in a small town. Sloan always had a soft spot for women, and she will not let these ruffians have their way with them. Will enlisting the help of a local legend be enough to defeat her new foes?

This is the true story of James Lafayette, a slave who spied for George Washington's army during the American Revolution. But while America celebrated its newfound freedom, James returned to slavery. His service hadn't qualified him for the release he'd been hoping for. For James, the fight wasn't over; he'd already helped his country gain its freedom, now it was time to win his own.

"Mother Mac's Boarding House is an exquisite read..." D. Donovan, Midwest Book Review In a segregated town overshadowed by the aftermath of WWII, Marty ‘Mother Mac’ MacKenzie—a strong-willed and determined woman— runs a "Colored Only" boarding house that becomes a sanctuary for those in need. Seeking a fresh start away from the painful memories of Alabama. Armed with nothing but her wits, a single prayer from Reverend White, and a heart full of hope, she navigates the challenges of a segregated society, determined to carve out a life for herself. When Marty lands a job at the local ...

The Other Kate's (TOK) African American short stories: three from the plantation and one from the space station The Right Reverend Doctor 44's Floaters Legend Uncle Texas Pete's Missing Gold Legend The Wailer and the Sea Breeze Dancer Mystery Needs of MIT Mars Institute of Technology Love Experimenters

As a young man, Virgil Moody vowed he would never be like his father, he would never own slaves. When he moves from his father's plantation in Savannah to New Orleans, he takes with him Annie, a tiny woman with sharp eyes and a sharper tongue, who he is sure would not survive life on the plantation. She'll be much safer with him, away from his father's cruelty. And when he discovers Annie's pregnancy, already a few months along, he is all the more certain that he made the right decision. As the years pass, the divide between Moody's assumptions and Annie's reality widens ever further.

Esi Edugyan won wide acclaim for her stunning novel Half-Blood Blues - a Man Booker Prize finalist and winner of the Scotiabank Giller Prize. In it, 83-year-old Sid Griffiths remembers his time during WWII playing in a Berlin jazz band called the Hot Time Swingers. When jazz music was denounced by the Nazis, Sid and his bandmates fled to Paris - a move that put Hieronymous, the band's brilliantly talented trumpeter, in constant danger due to his Afro-German heritage.

A Poet of the Invisible World follows a boy named Nouri, born in 13th-century Persia with four ears instead of two. Orphaned as an infant, he's taken into a Sufi order, where he meets an assortment of dervishes and is placed upon a path toward spiritual awakening. As he stumbles from one painful experience to the next, he grows into manhood. Each trial he endures shatters another obstacle within - and leads Nouri on toward transcendence.

Old loves, festering hatreds, and buried family secrets collide in this sweeping tale of Jazz Age New York. David McKay has returned from the dead, and he's on a mission to uncover the truth about his sister's brutal death in the glittering world of the Harlem Renaissance. As a civil rights attorney, he disappeared while investigating a lynching, but now he's back and determined to expose the lies, hypocrisy, and betrayal that lurk behind the facade of the Jazz Age. But with each day that passes, he gets closer to the dangerous secrets that could lead to his downfall. Will his enemies ...

Set against the backdrop of the Harlem Renaissance, The Color Line uncovers the long buried story of The Harlem Hellfighters, one of the many African-American units that served in the first World War. By focusing on the personal journey of Serval Rivard, from his wedding day to the trenches of the Western Front and home again, the story reveals not only the Hellfighters’ history, but that of two families and their place in Harlem’s most glorious era.

Sally Harrison and her family are slaves on a plantation in Georgia. But when Master decides to sell Sally and her brother, the family escapes to seek shelter with a tribe of Seminoles who are rumored to adopt runaway slaves. After a perilous journey, Sally’s family finds and joins the tribe. But while her father and brother easily adjust to Indian ways, Sally can’t seem to find her place.

As the 1950s' Mau Mau war breaks out in the foothills of Mt. Kenya, Wambũi, a 14-year-old girl, leaves her besieged village to join a prestigious boarding school, a half day’s journey away by train. There, she becomes aware of her extraordinary mathematical abilities discovered by her teacher Eileen Atwood. Initially, Wambũi views Eileen’s attentions with suspicion and hostility, but over time, the two grow close and form a lifelong friendship.

Leona, an isolated American anthropologist, gives birth to a baby girl in a remote Maasai village and must decide how she can be a mother, in spite of her own grim childhood. Jane, a lonely expat wife, follows her husband to the tropics and learns just how fragile life is. Simi, a barren Maasai woman, must confront her infertility in a society in which females are valued by their reproductive roles. In this affecting debut novel, these three very different women grapple with motherhood, recalibrate their identities and confront unforeseen tragedies and triumphs.

When two English brothers arrive at a Barbados sugar plantation, they bring with them a darkness beyond what the slaves have already known. Washington Black - an 11-year-old field slave - is horrified to find himself chosen to live in the quarters of one of these men. But the man is not as Washington expects him to be. His new master is the eccentric Christopher Wilde - naturalist, explorer, inventor and abolitionist - whose obsession to perfect a winged flying machine disturbs all who know him.