Behind every strong woman are the women who raised her.

'Heartbreaking, hopeful, and resilient... a masterpiece' TARA M. STRINGFELLOW, author of Memphis

'Epic, heartbreaking and beautiful' KARIN SLAUGHTER

Some are bound by the blood in their veins, some are bound by the love they have to give: this is a story of mothers and daughters, secrets and history.

A birth mother
Raised by her beloved grandmother in tension-filled, segregated Virginia, Grace is barely a teenager when she is shipped up North to live with her formidably ambitious aunt. She falls in love and ends up pregnant: then, in the ultimate act of betrayal, her baby girl is taken from her and given up for adoption.

An adoptive mother
Lolo has never had it easy, her life riddled with pain and loss. Her brightest dream is to be married and to have a family of her own, and she will tell lies and keep secrets to obtain it. When those secrets start to spill out, Lolo is willing to do whatever it takes to keep her dream intact and those she loves together.

The daughter to both
When Lolo's headstrong daughter Rae discovers that she is adopted, and that she is about to become a parent herself, she knows that there is an important reckoning that must be faced about herself and her two mothers.

Spanning decades, from the Great Migration and the civil unrest of the '60s to the cultural shift of the early 2000s, Denene Millner's intimate yet epic modern masterpiece is poetic, powerful, filled with joy and deep love: a hymn to Black motherhood.