From National Book Award finalist Susan Straight comes a haunting historical novel about a Louisiana slave girl’s perilous journey to freedom.
Daughter of an African mother and a white father she never knew, Moinette is a house maid on a plantation south of New Orleans. At fourteen she is sold, separated from her mother without a chance to say goodbye. Bright, imaginative and well aware of everything she risks, Moinette at once begins to prepare for an opportunity to escape. Inspired by a true story, A Million Nightingales portrays Moinette’s experience—and the treacherous world she must navigate—with uncommon richness, intricacy, and drama.
Susan Straight, professor of creative writing at the University of California, Riverside, has won the Gold Medal for Fiction from the San Francisco-based Commonwealth Club for her fifth novel, “Highwire Moon.” All her novels are set in the fictitious town of Rio Seco, a loose parallel to her hometown of Riverside, where she still lives.