The Blood of My Mother

"Lonesome Dove meets Where the Crawdads Sing" in this "gripping saga about a perilous time in our nation's history and a woman who survived it against all odds" (Patricia Wood, author of Lottery, shortlisted for the 2008 Orange Prize for Fiction).

 


"I could not stop reading." —Jacquelyn Mitchard, New York Times–bestselling author of The Deep End of the Ocean, the inaugural choice of Oprah's Book Club


 


After the deaths of her white father and mixed-race mother, young Eliza is left with neither home nor family in the newly forming frontier of Texas.


 


After enduring unimaginable cruelty as a slave, Eliza escapes, marries, becomes a mother, and realizes her dream of having a small farm. But she must fight—and kill—to keep it. And survival means welcoming others who have been shunned or forgotten by society into her world. Living and laboring together, will these outcasts find the strength and community they need to survive and flourish?


 


Acclaimed author Roccie Hill, inspired by the story of her great-great grandmother, now presents an unforgettable, deeply research, and wildly popular historical saga of a woman and a place, each growing and enduring under multiple flags through the sorrows and turbulence of history.

WILLA Literary Award Winner for Historical Fiction

"A saga with many layers . . . [A] riveting, addictive journey." —Joanne Hardy, author of The Girl in the Butternut Dress

 


"Robbed by fate and evil-doers of everything except her ferocious spirit, Eliza fights for her own space in the pitiless frontier that will become the state of Texas. Combining lyrical prose and non-stop action, Roccie Hill conjures an unforgettable character, based loosely on her own great-great grandmother, who somehow triumphs over nearly unthinkable privations. Hill's Eliza springs to life as a true American original." —Jacquelyn Mitchard, New York Times bestselling author of The Deep End of the Ocean, the inaugural choice of Oprah's Book Club


 


"Lonesome Dove meets Where the Crawdads Sing. I simply could not put this novel down. Vividly written, The Blood of My Mother is a gripping saga about a perilous time in our nation's history and a woman who survived it against all odds. It is a novel about how love and hope transcend man's inhumanity to man. I was pulled deeply into the story and was held there until the very last page." —Patricia Wood, author of Lottery, shortlisted for the 2008 Orange Prize for Fiction