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WHETHER THEY BE is “a very strong project in that it examines how the underlying power structures around sexual taboo, disability, and race hurt families through compelling characters in a well rendered historical fiction setting.”
~ Blacklist Review
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“Gripping from the start, WHETHER THEY BE is a novel of lush imagery and cultural touchstones that awaken national bruises, unflinchingly. Inventive and well developed, it is an honest look at the subtle and not so subtle race-inspired harm in the lives of Nebraskans who feel real on the page. Besides local issues, [the] novel paints a compelling picture of the Vietnam War’s effects on politics and communities, and on the powder keg of race in the U.S…and what it means to be a woman. A mother. Wife.”
~ Natashia Deón, NAACP Image Award Nominee for Outstanding Literature, teacher, attorney and author. (Sensitivity reader of WHETHER THEY BE)
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My novel manuscript, WHETHER THEY BE, is a semi-finalist in the 2022 Simon & Schuster Books Like Us contest as well as a 2022 San Francisco Writers’ Conference Finalist. It was also a 2021 semi-finalist in the James Jones First Novel Fellowship.
In the novel, set in the turbulent days of early 1968, Grace Rowley’s shameful secret is exposed, forcing two families, one white and one black, to confront their histories and negotiate their paths forward.
Following a riot in Omaha where a black teenager is killed by an off-duty white police officer, Grace learns that the baby she gave up two decades earlier is alive and still living in the institution where she, a frightened teenager, was forced to leave him. Now, herself the mother of a teenaged girl, Grace’s marriage, job and relationships are thrown into turmoil. Despite pressure to forget him, she is compelled to meet her son and tell the truth about his father.
WHETHER THEY BE is the story of three generations of a white Nebraskan family early in the civil rights movement whose attitudes range from white supremacy, attempts at allyship and, finally, friendships across races. At its heart, the story is about the intersection of white and black lives, the obstacles to true connection and Grace’s attempts to bridge the divide. It shows a riveting moment in middle America, one that echoes present-day struggles against racism.
At about 80,000 words, my debut novel WHETHER THEY BE is a particularly timely and provocative work of 1960s historical fiction, and its themes of race, religion and interracial love are explored in a riveting, cinematic narrative.