Tara Stringfellow will be an author to watch for years to come . . . A stellar debut'
Jacqueline Woodson bestselling author of Red at the Bone Joan can't change their past But she
can create her future Joan was only a child the last time she visited Memphis. She doesn't
remember the bustle of Beale Street on a summer's night. She doesn't know she's as likely to
hear a gunshot ring out as the sound of children playing. How the smell of honeysuckle is
almost overwhelming as she climbs the porch steps to the house where her mother grew up. But
when the front door opens she does remember Derek. This house full of history is home to the
women of the North family. They are no strangers to adversity resilience runs in their blood.
Fifty years ago Hazel's husband was lynched by his all-white police squad yet she made a life
for herself and her daughters in the majestic house he built for them. August still lives there
running a salon where the neighbourhood women gather. And now this house is the only place Joan
has left. It is in sketching portraits of the women in her life her aunt and her mother the
women who come to have their hair done the women who come to chat and gossip that Joan begins
laughing again begins living. Memphis is a celebration of the enduring strength of female
bonds of what we pass down from mother to daughter. Epic in scope yet intimate in detail it
is a vivid portrait of three generations of a Southern black family as well as an ode to the
city they call home.
