Glorious (Unabridged‪)‬

Academy Award nominee Alfre Woodard narrates Glorious, by Bernice L. McFadden, a novel set against the backdrops of the Jim Crow South, the Harlem Renaissance, and the civil rights era. This is the story of Easter Venetta Bartlett, a fictional Harlem Renaissance writer whose tumultuous path out of Waycross, Georgia, to success, ruin, and revival offers a candid portrait of the American experience in all its beauty and cruelty. Woodard’s nuanced narration beautifully enhances McFadden’s imaginative blend of fictional and real events and people—such as Marcus Garvey, Langston Hughes, pianist Fats Waller, and shipping heiress Nancy Cunard.

Glorious poses the question that is the title of Langston Hughes’s famous poem: What happens to a dream deferred? It is an audacious exploration into the nature of self-hatred, love, possession, ego, betrayal, and, finally, redemption. Easter is not only a survivor, but also a creator, and a fearless blazer of trails.

Bernice L. McFadden is the author of six critically acclaimed novels, including the classic Sugar and Nowhere Is a Place, which was a Washington Post Best Fiction title for 2006.