African-Americans in Historical Fiction

A Long Way from Home
Connie Briscoe
Written by the author of the New York Times bestseller Sisters and Lovers, this novel of mothers and daughters, set in Virginia, tells the story of three generations of house slaves, from the time of President James Madison to the Civil War.

Sally Hemings
Barbara Chase-Riboud
Using documents and historical evidence, this novel explores the complexities of a 38-year affair between President Thomas Jefferson and his beautiful slave – a connection that has recently been confirmed by DNA evidence.

Rattlebone
Maxine Clair
This novel depicts the black Midwest of the 1950s, where towns could count their white folks on one hand. The author presents several of Rattlebone's citizens: October Brown, the new schoolteacher with a camel's walk and shoulder-padded, to-the-nines dresses; Irene Wilson, naive and wise, who must grapple with her parent's failing marriage as she steps eagerly into adulthood; and Thomas Pemberton, owner of the local rooming house, an old man with a young heart. The interconnected stories celebrate the natural beauty of the Midwest and the dignity and vitality of these most ordinary lives.

The Wake of the Wind
J. California Cooper
Mordecai and Lifee meet as slaves on a plantation in post-Civil War Texas. As emancipation is declared, they head east with several other newly freed companions to look for a safe place to live. The tightly knit clan of former slaves prospers, but when lynchings in the area become frequent, they are forced to leave. Eventually they settle on an abandoned farm, where they survive economic depression and other troubles. When tragedy ensues, the next generation must assume responsibility for preserving the family.

Passing by Samaria
Sharon Ewell Foster
Fleeing danger in her beloved Mississippi homeland, a young African-American woman seeks new life, love, truth and joy in romantic, turn-of-the-century Chicago.

The Autobiography of Miss Jane Pittman
Ernest Gaines
Fictional biography of a black slave, who lived for 100 years after the Civil War.

Mama Flora's Family
Alex Haley
This sweeping family saga of three generations in the mid-20th century is the final, brilliant inheritance from Alex Haley, the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of Roots. At the center of this poignant novel stands the indomitable Mama Flora, matriarch of an extraordinary family of destitute Tennessee sharecroppers.

Free Man of Color
Barbara Hambly
Chronicles the adventures of piano teacher and surgeon Ben January, a free man of color, in 1833 New Orleans. The plot is a whodunit involving the murder of Angelique Crozat, the ex-mistress of a recently deceased Creole planter. Back home after 16 years in Paris, January intervenes. For his trouble, January becomes an unwitting scapegoat of the influential white suspects. Menaced by ruthless cutthroats, he must risk his freedom to absolve himself.

Fever Season
Barbara Hambly
Benjamin January returns in the second novel of this historical series set in early 19th-century New Orleans. The doctor is unwillingly thrown into a dangerous predicament when a runaway slave asks for his help contacting her lover. Risking both his life and his freedom, Ben pursues the truth through a lush and fevered world of opulent townhouses, grim cemeteries and raucous taverns.

Graveyard Dust
Barbara Hambly
The third mystery in the series featuring Benjamin January, a free man of color. In 1834 New Orleans, Benjamin's efforts to clear his sister of murder charges take him from the city's slave quarters to the elegant courtyards of its most powerful families.

Jacob's Ladder: A Story of Virginia during the War
Donald McCaig
Duncan Gatewood, 17 and heir to Gatewood Plantation, falls in love with Maggie, a mulatto slave, who conceives a son, Jacob. Maggie and Jacob are sold south and Duncan is packed off by his irate father to the Virginia Military Institute. Another Gatewood slave, Jesse – whose love for Maggie is unrequited – escapes to find her and is sheltered by a young white couple who are sentenced to prison for this crime. Jesse finds his freedom and enlists in Mr. Lincoln's army; in time he will confront his former masters.

The Middle Passage
Charles Richard Johnson
A savage parable of the black experience in America, Johnson's picaresque novel begins in 1830 when Rutherford Calhoun, a newly freed Illinois slave eking out a living as a petty thief in New Orleans, hops aboard a square-rigger to evade the prim Boston schoolteacher who wants to marry him. Blending confessional, ship's log and adventure, the narrative interweaves a disquisition on slavery, poverty, race relations and an African worldview at odds with Western materialism.

Beloved
Toni Morrison
Toni Morrison's magnificent Pulitzer Prize-winning novel – first published in 1987 – brings the unimaginable experience of slavery into the literature of today and into the reader's comprehension.

The Feast of All Saints
Anne Rice
Set in 19th-century New Orleans, the story depicts the gens de couleur libre, or the Free People of Color, a class caught between the worlds of white privilege and black oppression.

The Confessions of Nat Turner
William Styron
Set in 1831, The Confessions Of Nat Turner tells – in his own words – of a black man who awaits death in a Virginia jail cell. His name is Nat Turner and he is a slave, a preacher and the leader of the only effective slave revolt in the history of that 'peculiar institution.'

The Color Purple
Alice Walker
This landmark work is Walker's Pulitzer Prize-winning novel that also won the American Book Award and established her as a major voice in modern fiction. The New York Times Book Review hailed its "intense emotional impact," and the San Francisco Chronicle called it "a work to stand beside literature of any time and place."

Jubilee
Margaret Walker
This stunningly different Civil War novel boasts a heroine to rival Scarlett O'Hara. Daughter of the white plantation owner and his beloved black mistress, Vyry was conceived, born and reared to womanhood behind the House. Steeped in knowledge of and feeling for the times and the people, Jubilee is a magnificent tale told with devastating truth.