Liz Here Now

A privileged child’s life is forever changed by the bravery of the family’s Black maid when Elizabeth Baxter refuses to silently witness the abuse Todd Connor and his siblings receive at the hands of their wealthy, prominent parents. Overcoming fear for her own safety, Liz endures both prejudice and police brutality in an attempt to protect her “little white babies,” until a lone white police captain believes the truth and becomes her ally. An autobiographical novel set during the tensions of the 1960s civil rights movement, Liz Here Now proves the healing power of love and determination. 


Only decades later does anyone learn of Liz’s bravery and the horror that had taken place within the Connor’s wealthy home. At Liz’s packed funeral, Todd, the sole white person in the church, is there to honor to the heroine who loved and saved him, his sister, and brother from the psychotic woman who was a mother in name only, and the complicity of their father, a renowned physician more concerned about protecting his prestige than his own children.


Unable to speak through his sorrow, Todd is reminded by Elizabeth’s grieving husband, “Yo’ dark story gonna show off her light. They gonna hear a truth about her fo’ the first time ever.” Those words spur Todd to fulfill Liz’s dying request: “She took my family’s secret to her grave,” he says, “but she asked me to break that silence now.”


Liz Here Now is set in the past, but delivers compelling lessons for today: that we all must become aware of the insidious effects of, and speak out against, abuse in any form, whether physical or the humiliating treatment many African-Americans are still subjected to daily.


Todd Connor’s autobiographical novel reveals the shocking truth of his childhood—a story he held private until now.


Connor is a CEO in the San Francisco Bay Area where he grew up and where this story takes place. Married with two grown children, he is involved in non-profits focused on the reconciliation of Blacks and whites, and serves as a part-time pastor at his church.


“For years, I tried to describe what it was like to be the victim of child abuse,” Connor said. “Even more complicated was explaining the deep love I experienced from the Black woman who was our maid. Others found it hard to understand the extreme contrasts of love and hatred coexisting in my early life. I knew I needed to bring people into that drama, to feel what my siblings and I felt as small children growing up with a psychotic mother, an uncaring father, and a loving Black woman who exuded God-like love and bravery during the 1960s while she, and her race, were simultaneously being abused by American society.”