A woman learns the incredible story of a real-life American Kingdom—and her family’s ties to it—in this enthralling novel from the New York Times bestselling, NAACP Image Award-winning author of Take My Hand. As featured in The Washington Post ∙ People ∙ Harper's Bazaar ∙ NPR ∙ TODAY ∙ ELLE ∙ PopSugar ∙ Reader's Digest ∙ SheReads ∙ Woman’s World ∙ Real Simple ∙ BookBrowse ∙ and more! Nikki hasn’t seen her grandmother in years. So when the elder calls out of the blue with an urgent request for Nikki to visit her in the hills of western North Carolina, Nikki hesitates only for a moment. After years of silence in her family, due to a mysterious estrangement between her mother and grandmother, she’s determined to learn the truth while she still can. But instead of answers about the recent past, Mother Rita tells Nikki an incredible story of a kingdom on this very mountain, and of her great-great-great grandmother, Luella, who would become its queen. It sounds like the makings of a fairy tale—royalty among a community of freed people. But the more Nikki learns about the Kingdom of the Happy Land, and the lives of those who dwelled in the ruins she discovers in the woods, the more she realizes how much of her identity and her family’s secrets are wrapped up in these hills. Because this land is their legacy, and it will be up to her to protect it before it, like so much else, is stolen away. Inspired by true events, Happy Land is a transporting multi-generational novel about the stories that shape us and the dazzling courage it takes to dream.
Author
Dolen Perkins-Valdez is the New York Times bestselling author of Wench (2010), Balm (2015), and most recently Take My Hand (2022). Take My Hand was awarded the 2023 NAACP Image Award for Literary Work-Fiction and the BCALA Fiction Award. It was named a Most Anticipated Book of 2022 in Newsweek, San Francisco Chronicle, Essence, NBC News, and elsewhere, and it was an IndieNext and LibraryReads pick for April 2022. The Washington Post called it "a jewel of a book." Dolen has established herself as a pre-eminent chronicler of American historical life. In 2017, HarperCollins released her first novel Wench as one of eight "Olive Titles," limited edition modern classics that included books by Edward P. Jones, Louise Erdrich, and Zora Neale Hurston. In 2013, Dolen wrote the introduction to a special edition of Solomon Northup's Twelve Years a Slave, published by Simon & Schuster, which became a New York Times bestseller. Recently, Dolen has written the Introduction for a 75th anniversary edition of George Orwell's 1984. Dolen is the current Chair of the Board of the PEN/Faulkner Foundation.
