In early Jim Crow Mississippi, politics could get you killed. Narcissa Tarver aims to be a survivor.
Caught between generations in her sprawling rural family as it struggles to preserve privilege in post-Reconstruction Mississippi, Narcissa Tarver feels like an afterthought. An inconvenience. Relegated to the care of an adolescent Black girl and regaled with stories of haints and witches, Narcissa envies her celebrated older brother Duncan. As her blossoming ambition to become a newspaper reporter intersects in startling ways with Duncan’s political career, Narcissa will have to choose between devotion to family and fidelity to the truths she uncovers. Hers is a story of disappointments, conflicted loyalties, and a search for identity in a changing world where questioning white supremacy and male dominance can get a girl in a mess of trouble.
