Skyland/South Buncombe Library Book Club: Happy Land, by Dolen Perkins-Valdez

Join us for a book discussion sponsored by the Friends of the Skyland/South Buncombe Library! 

This month we will be reading Happy Land by Dolen Perkins-Valdez.  This title is part of the One Book, One Buncombe initiative -- check the events calendar for tie-in programs all around the library system in April & May!  All libraries will have free copies that anyone make pick up and keep; just ask us at the service desk! (While supplies last.)

From the publisher:

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.