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Shop nowAbsalom’s Daughters
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Learn moreTwo half sisters, one black and one white, embark on a risky road trip through the Jim Crow South of the 1950s in this spellbinding story of identity and race.
Self-educated and brown skinned, Cassie works full time in her grandmother’s laundry in rural Mississippi. Illiterate and white, Judith falls for “colored music” and dreams of life as a big-city radio star. These teenage girls are half sisters. And when they catch wind of their wayward father’s inheritance coming down in Virginia, they hitch their hopes on a road trip together to claim what’s rightly theirs.
In an old junk car, with a frying pan, a ham, and a few dollars hidden in a shoe, they set off through the Deep South of the 1950s, a bewitchingly beautiful landscape as well as one bedeviled by racial strife and violence. Suzanne Feldman’s Absalom’s Daughters combines the buddy movie, the coming-of-age tale, and a dash of magical realism to enthrall and move us with an unforgettable, illuminating novel.
Suzanne Feldman, a recipient of the Missouri Review Jeffrey E. Smith Editors’ Prize and a finalist for the Bakeless Prize in fiction, holds an MA in fiction from Johns Hopkins University and a BFA in art from the Maryland Institute College of Art. Her short fiction has appeared in Narrative, the Missouri Review, Gargoyle, and other literary journals. She lives in Frederick, Maryland.
Lisa Renee Pitts is an award-winning actress in theater, television, and film, as well as an accomplished audiobook narrator. She has been seen Off-Broadway, in Europe, and in regional theaters across the United States, performing leading roles in such prominent plays as A Raisin in the Sun, Doubt, Waiting for Lefty, Valley Song, and Our Town. Her television appearances include The Shield and Law and Order, and she played the recurring role of Allison Sawyer on the hit family drama Lincoln Heights for the ABC Family Channel. Lisa's audiobook titles include biographies, fiction, nonfiction and children's novels, including Pushkin and the Queen of Spades by Alice Randall, for which she won an AudioFile Earphones Award for excellence in narration. Other notable titles are Left to Tell by Immaculee Ilibagiza, Better Than I Know Myself by Virginia DeBerry and Donna Grant, and My Name Is Not Angelica by Scott O'Dell. Lisa is a graduate of Rutgers University, where she received her B.F.A. in Theater Arts. She lives in Burbank, California.
Reviews
“Sparkling…combines magic and identity in breathtaking ways.”
“Her work is reminiscent of both William Faulkner and Toni Morrison, but her voice is entirely her own and utterly original. Feldman’s prose blisters and pops with sparks…A searing and magical debut by a monumental new talent.”
“Resonant and engrossing…The book breathes new life into the road trip story both with its inclusion of magical realism and with its memorable pairing of two teenagers—Cassie, who’s black, and Judith, who’s white—who have recently discovered that they have the same father…This warm story with two endearing leads offers a new frame of understanding for what it means to seek freedom, and what the seeker must give up in exchange.”
“Feldman’s quick read will appeal to Faulkner fans with its references to Absalom, Absalom! and to all who will be intrigued by how two girls discover their true identities in a place determined to limit their options.”
“Sharp-eyed and witty, Absalom’s Daughters is a delightful recipe consisting of one part girls’ road trip, one part family saga, and one part good old-fashioned southern yarn. The path from Mississippi to Virginia is full of danger and Jim Crow bigotry, but Cassie and Judith are the perfect heroines to take it on. An absorbing read, full of heart!”
“In Absalom’s Daughters, we are taken into that place where only a really good novel is capable of going―a world that completely absorbs us. Starting in the rural segregated south of the 1950s, the novel drops us into a setting where we taste the dust off the back roads, and breathe in the fear and hope of those who travel along them. This is nothing we are just reading about; this is a space we are a part of. Through her styling, vernacular, and storytelling, Suzanne Feldman has created in Absalom’s Daughters a novel that engages, entertains, provokes, and ultimately reminds us of the complexity and fragility of being human in a world overcrowded with expectation and agenda.”
“Beautiful, funny, and wise, Absalom’s Daughters is a moving adventure and a powerful evocation of the Jim Crow South. Judith and Cassie’s odyssey embodies America’s long struggle to achieve compassion and justice despite our deep racial divide. By turns sweet and sly, the story of these two perfectly realized sisters inspired me and gave me hope. It could not be timelier, but it also achieves the timelessness of truly great fiction.”
“Absalom’s Daughters is a beautiful and compelling story, written with utmost authority.”
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