The Seven Daughters of Dupree: A Novel

Williams (Beyond Bourbon Street) follows several generations of Black women through slavery and the Jim Crow era into the present in her stirring latest. In 1995 Chicago, 14-year-old Tati listens to her hairdresser mother, Nadia, and church-lady grandmother, Gladys, trade stories about their family’s history. Their first American-born ancestor, Emma, was conceived when her mother was raped by her white enslaver. Since then, the Dupree women have carried a curse that prevents them from having male children. Emma’s daughter, Jubilee, passes as white and begins a new life in segregated Land’s End, Ala., where she marries a white man. When their daughter, Ruby, turns out dark-complexioned, Jubilee’s husband concludes she’s had a Black lover and threatens her with a knife. Later, in the 1950s, Gladys, Ruby’s daughter, flees the racism and violence of the South for Chicago with Eugene, her Pullman porter beau. The nonlinear narrative builds to a breathtaking and heartbreaking climax, when Emma’s mother joins a small group of enslaved men planning to escape to Canada in 1861, and it resolves with a tender and hopeful portrayal of the family reconnecting with its Southern roots, as Tati, now a lawyer, moves from Chicago to Land’s End. This epic tale of resilience will move readers. Agent: Peter Steinberg, UTA. (Jan.)

This review has been edited to remove a spoiler.