In Jackson, Mississippi, in 1962, there are lines that are not crossed. With the civil rights movement exploding all around them, three women start a movement of their own, forever changing a town and the way women--black and white, mothers and daughters--view one another.

"The Color Purple depicts the lives of African American women in early twentieth-century rural Georgia. Separated as girls, sisters Celie and Nettie sustain their loyalty to and hope in each other across time, distance and silence. Through a series of letters spanning nearly thirty years, first from Celie to God, then the sisters to each other despite the unknown, the novel draws readers into its rich and memorable portrayals of Celie, Nettie, Shug...

Their Eyes Were Watching God, an American classic, is a luminous and haunting novel about Janie Crawford, a Southern black woman in the 1930s whose journey from a free-spirited girl to a woman of independence and substance has inspired writers and readers for close to seventy years. This poetic, graceful love story, rooted in black folk traditions and steeped in mythic realism, celebrates, boldly and brilliantly, African-American culture and heritage....

"Befriending Traci Calloway Cole is the best thing Simone Phillips has ever done. Traci is the kind of woman Simone wants to be-in every way possible. She begins copying her role model. Not because she wants to be Traci. She just wants to be exactly like Traci. Traci doesn't worry, though. She knows Simone doesn't mean any harm and that her mimicry is only sincere admiration. Until she discovers how far Simone's obsession has gone."--

In 1923, fifteen-year-old Hattie Shepherd flees Georgia and settles in Philadelphia, hoping for a chance at a better life. Instead, she marries a man who will bring her nothing but disappointment and watches helplessly as her firstborn twins succumb to an illness a few pennies could have prevented. Hattie gives birth to nine more children whom she raises with grit and mettle and not an ounce of the tenderness they crave. She vows to prepare them for...

A light-skinned African American woman is married to a white man who is ignorant of her racial heritage. Her childhood friend, equally capable of "passing," has chosen to live her life as a black woman and deny the existence of racism. A chance meeting forces both women to confront truths about themselves.

"In Henry Adams, Kansas, Zoey has tried to befriend a man who wants people to stay off his property by leaving him small offerings. When he dies, he leaves a saddlebag of gold to Zoey, who also has to deal with her parents' separation and troubled friends"--

After Othella--the daughter of the town tramp in Shreveport, Louisiana--convinces her to give her baby away, 15-year-old Ruby Jean Upshaw runs away to New Orleans where nothing can erase the memories of the child she lost or quell her simmering rage at Othella for persuading her to let her baby go.

Dana, a modern African-American woman, is is snatched abruptly from her home in 1976 California and transported to the antebellum South in order to save the life of a white slave owner.

"The Civil War has turned neighbor against neighbor--but for one scientist spy and her philosopher soldier, war could bind them together..."--Page [4] of cover.