Picture this: It’s the summer of 1995: Ten-year-old Joan, her mother, and her younger sister flee her father’s explosive temper and seek refuge at her mother’s ancestral home in Memphis. Sadly, this is not the first time violence has altered the course of the family’s trajectory. Half a century earlier, Joan’s grandfather built this majestic house in the historic black neighborhood of Douglass — only to be lynched days after becoming the first black detective in the city. Joan tries to settle into her new life, but family secrets cast a longer shadow than any of them expected.
Memphis by Tara M. Stringfellow unfolds over 70 years and is told through the voices of four women who rise up and show the reader what resilience truly is.
