One Blood by Denene Millner
Homegoing meets The Mothers where three women are tied together by blood, love, and family secrets in this searing novel by New York Times bestseller Denene Millner.
Raised by her beloved grandmother in tension-filled, post-segregation Virginia, Grace is barely a teenager when she loses her Maw Maw. Shellshocked, she is shipped up North to live with her formidably ambitious Aunt Hattie—a woman who firmly left behind her “undesirable” Southern roots in pursuit of upward mobility. Thrust into the world of the Black and socially ambitious, Grace finds herself trapped in a society of stifling respectability, fancy teas, and coveted debutante balls. Feeling like a fish out of water, Grace’s only place of sweet comfort is with the smart, handsome son of one of the society’s grand dames. However, when Dale gets caught up in a racial police killing and Grace ends up pregnant, she is quickly hidden away and his is promptly shipped off to college. Then in the ultimate act of betrayal, Grace is deceived by Hattie and her brand new baby girl is given up for adoption.
Beautiful, intelligent and fierce, Delores a.k.a. Lolo has never had it easy. Her life has been riddled with pain and loss. Once she makes it up north, she puts aside her dream of being a model to do what she has to do to survive as a woman with little money and no get married and have a family of her own. And she will tell lies and keep secrets to obtain it. Then Lolo does have it a doting husband, a beautiful son and daughter, and a lovely home. When secrets start to spill out and she and her family slowly begin to unravel, Lolo is willing to do whatever it takes to keep her dream intact and those she loves together.
When Lolo’s headstrong daughter, Rae discovers that she is adopted, it is just one secret among others that her family is keeping. Not out of a desire to deceive, but out of a determination to survive and protect. When Rae finds out that she is about to become a mother herself, she knows that there is an important reckoning that must be faced about herself and her two mothers.
Potent, poetic, powerful, told with deep love, and spanning from the Great Migration to the civil unrest of the 1960s to the quest for women’s equality in early 2000s, Denene Millner’s beautifully wrought novel explores three women’s intimate struggle with generational trauma and healing.
