Dolen Perkins-Valdez's powerful fourth novel, Happy Land, examines the intricacies of family lineage, interwoven with land ownership and the story of a free Black kingdom in the Blue Ridge Mountains.
After years of estrangement, real estate agent Veronica "Nikki" Lovejoy-Berry is summoned to her grandmother's house in North Carolina. When she arrives, Nikki has many questions about the contentious relationship between her mother and grandmother, but Mother Rita has other plans: she tells Nikki about a remote kingdom of Black people who made their home on this land in the days after slavery. The kingdom's queen, Luella, is Mother Rita's--and Nikki's--ancestor. As Nikki learns to listen to her grandmother (and help care for her lush, extensive flower garden), she draws closer to some answers about her family's discord, and some guidance for her own next chapter.
Perkins-Valdez (Take My Hand) shifts between Nikki's 21st-century perspective and Luella's narrative as she helps build the kingdom alongside her father and other formerly enslaved people. Luella marries, becomes a mother, and works alongside her husband, William, and others to keep the kingdom a place of peace, joy, and self-sufficiency. But their semi-utopia can't last forever: eventually, Luella and her community face difficult choices and must adapt their individual and communal lives amid hardship and tragedy. Their legacy, however, endures until Nikki's time with Mother Rita, and their history raises thought-provoking questions about agency, self-governance, and love.
Sensitively rendered and potently described, Happy Land asks important questions about self-determination and explores the complexities of enduring emotional bonds. --Katie Noah Gibson, blogger at Cakes, Tea and Dreams