In 1961 Charlotte, North Carolina, the predominantly black neighborhood of Brooklyn is a bustling city within a city. Self-contained and vibrant, it has its own restaurants, schools, theaters, churches, and night clubs. There are shotgun shacks and poverty, along with well-maintained houses like the one Loraylee Hawkins shares with her young son, Hawk, her Uncle Ray, and her grandmother, Bibi. Loraylee's love for Archibald Griffin, Hawk's white father and manager of the cafeteria where she works, must be kept secret in the segregated South.
Loraylee has heard rumors that the city plans to bulldoze her neighborhood, claiming it's dilapidated and dangerous. The government promises to provide new housing and relocate businesses. But locals like Pastor Ebenezer Polk, who's facing the demolition of his church, know the value of Brooklyn does not lie in bricks and mortar. Generations have lived, loved, and died here, supporting and strengthening each other. Yet street by street, longtime residents are being forced out. And Loraylee, searching for a way to keep her family together, will form new alliances—and find an unexpected path that may yet lead her home.
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Anna Jean Mayhew, a native of Charlotte, North Carolina, has never lived outside the state, although she often travels to Europe with her Swiss-born husband. Much of her work reflects her vivid memories of growing up in the segregated South. She has been both production editor of a major medical journal and editor of a science fiction fan magazine. In earlier careers, she ran a court reporting agency and worked in opera management. She has been a member of the same writing group since 1987 and now leads two groups herself. She is a writer-in-residence at the Weymouth Center for the Arts & Humanities and a former member of the board of trustees of the North Carolina Writers’ Network. Her credits include a book of trivia about South Carolina, a guide for medical writing, and a story in Writers of the Future, Volume I. The Dry Grass of August is her first novel.
Allyson Johnson is an actress and singer who began performing at age twelve as coanchor of Bubble Gum Digest, for which she won an Emmy. After earning a degree in psychology from Brown University, she moved to New York where she became a social worker before shifting to a career in television and radio. Johnson has recorded countless commercials, promos, audiobooks, narrations, and animation series.