Twelve years have passed since Chicken George and his family journeyed from Virginia to Henning, Tennessee. It is now 1882, and as Reconstruction fades and progress for newly freed people wanes with the spread of Jim Crow laws across the st…

Thirteen years had drifted by in Henning, Tennessee, and now, in 1896, the town was embracing a burgeoning industrial age fueled by the expanding railroad. Returning home from Kansas City after a decade spent teaching, Elizabeth Harvey reun…

It was 1914 when Will and Cynthia Palmer’s daughter, Bertha, journeyed to college, where she met and fell in love with Simon Haley, a student who possessed little money but boundless industry. Simultaneously, Jim and Carrie Warner's son had…

The year is 1917. A stark memory rises: a military gallows in Texas, where men of the 24th Infantry—black soldiers convicted of offenses ranging from mutiny—were brought to their end. The image lingers, then shifts to 1918, to a small churc…

Eleven years after the Haley family’s return, the year is 1932, and the story begins in Henning, Tennessee, amidst the hardships of the Great Depression. Simon remains without a professorship, still searching for suitable employment. During…

It had been seven years since Alex’s mother died, and the Haley family had relocated to Elizabeth City, North Carolina. Simon, having remarried, now taught agriculture at the state teacher's college there. Alex, feeling adrift, abandoned hi…

The narrative culminates in 1960, in Henning, Tennessee—a decade since Alex’s wife Nan departed. He now attends the funeral of his great Aunt Elizabeth, having established a writing career through freelance articles, including interviews wi…