Dolen Perkins-Valdez in conversation with Tayari Jones

Join us for an evening with Dolen Perkins-Valdez, the New York Times bestselling, NAACP Image Award-winning author of Take My Hand. Perkins-Valdez will be in conversation with Tayari Jones to discuss her riveting new novel Happy Land, the story of a woman who learns the astonishing truth of her family’s ties to a vanished American Kingdom. This event will take place in the Sanctuary of First Baptist Church Decatur. Registration is free, but required.

Charis Books and More will be the bookseller for this event. You may preorder the book from them here, or purchase a copy there.

About the Book:

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.

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.

About the Author:

Dolen Perkins-Valdez is the New York Times bestselling and award-winning author of Balm, Wench, and Take My Hand, which was a Target Book Club pick and earned her an NAACP Image Award for Outstanding Fiction. She is known for reaching into the archives of American history and excavating the stories of long-forgotten Black men and women. And in Happy Land, she widens her scope to uncover the true story of an entire kingdom that existed in history and very few know about. Hidden in the hills of Appalachia, there was once The Kingdom of the Happy Land, a territory ruled and owned by formerly enslaved people. Inspired by stories of African royals, they reclaimed their freedom on American soil. For a while they thrived… until the kingdom suddenly disappeared. Happy Land shares a fictionalized account of the real Kingdom of the Happy Land, a historical moment which has barely been explored until now.