A gripping, richly imagined African-inspired fantasy in which a Black girl finds her power and saves her people from evil, by the Coretta Scott King/John Steptoe New Talent Award-winning author of Black Panther: The Young Prince. In the land of Alkebulan, twelve-year-old Asha is an orphan, raised by Madame S, the proprietor of a traveling carnival. When Madame S is attacked by ghoulish creatures, she manages to tell Asha before she dies, “Seek the Underground Kingdom, where the black flowers bloom.” Asha doesn’t understand the mysterious words, but they launch her onto a page-turning quest to protect her people and stop an ancient evil. Along the way, she uncovers shocking secrets about the family she never knew and begins to find her place in the world as she discovers her own untapped powers.
Author
I grew up on Air Force bases and have lived in Japan, Maine, Alabama, Michigan, South Carolina, Delaware, Washington, DC, Illinois and a bunch of other places I don’t remember. After reading Ray Bradbury’s R is for Rocket and Eleanor Cameron’s Wonderful Flight to the Mushroom Planet I fell in love with books. I haven’t stopped reading since. HOODOO is my debut middle-grade novel. My second novel, THE MESMERIST, is available February, 2017. My work is represented by Adriann Ranta of Foundry Literary + Media. My publisher is Clarion, an imprint of Houghton Mifflin Harcourt.
