"Together, the women of this family have saved this land and legacy, used our smarts to keep us here on this mountain that has given us refuge. Now our entire family will be stewards of this place once again, will understand this rootedness is a gift.” ―Dolen Perkins-Valdez, Happy Land
If you are a reader in search of uplifting stories in relationship with land, self-determination, striving for ownership, and holding on to that inheritance through generations, I have several recent books to recommend. All are from diverse authors who honor family heritage with heartfelt connections to land and an intimate sense of place.
And while my focus is on books with stories from Black American and Native Hawaiian ancestral lands, I gratefully recognize the healing land reclamation work of the Haskell Greenhouse, opens a new window. Their team of Indigenous stewards and community volunteers helps protect and conserve the habitats on the beautiful campus of Haskell Indian Nations University, in the Wakarusa River Valley for our more-than-human relatives. After sharing about these books, I’ll include more information about community volunteer opportunities with the Haskell Greenhouse.
The Great Wherever
The Great Wherever by Shannon Sanders is an engaging, wise, and wry African American family saga rooted in western Tennessee with an insightful view of land stewardship and inheritance and multigenerational storytelling that includes benevolent ghosts of past generations. This is a contemporary novel with seamless historical notes for context. It revolves around 32-year-old Aubrey Lamb, all her struggles, and both the living and the dead in her family lineage. Following the death of her father, Aubrey is impulsive and adrift. She’s inherited a portion of the family farm in Tennessee, and even though selling the land might salvage her financial troubles, her co-owning family members have a longer view of the land as heritage. The charm of extended family relationships, intergenerational tensions, and mini-reunions are deeply relatable. There is much thoughtful storytelling and, gratefully, many laugh-out-loud moments thanks to the characters being haunted by their astute, omniscient ancestors!
The Great Wherever just published July 7, 2026, and is Shannon Sanders’s debut, full-length novel. This very discussable book will inspire book club joy. A thoughtful reading guide includes a family tree and conversational questions, available on publisher Macmillan’s website. Beware of plot spoilers in the questions. Author Shannon Sanders is a Black writer and attorney based in Maryland. Her first book Company is a collection of linked short stories with similar African American multigenerational family themes. The title relates to the characters’ anxious feelings of having guests, especially uninvited company. Company earned the 2024 Los Angeles Times Book Prizes' Art Seidenbaum Award for First Fiction. Visit Shannon Sander’s website to explore many of her short stories.
Happy Land
Another deeply relatable novel to compare to The Great Wherever with complex family dynamics and legal challenges to hold onto inherited land is Happy Land by Dolan Perkins-Valdez. Happy Land honors an actual historic community of Black American homesteaders in Henderson County, North Carolina during the post-Civil War Reconstruction era. This community is striving and self-empowered; they actually declared themselves a kingdom and named a king and queen on the land they purchased. Luella is their queen, and she is such a great narrator-storyteller! Among the wisest words she shared is: "Books, reading, and libraries are magical! To read is to have the language to ask for the things you wanted." And this quote is particularly resonant for me: "A family tree isn't just something you draw on paper, it's an actual tree planted in the ground with bark for skin and branches for arms. It's the Earth pushed up into the sky. It's the physical manifestation of dreams."
The author skillfully balances both contemporary and ancestral timelines with great charisma for most of the characters. Demonstrating intimate connections to the natural world, the ancestral characters grow their own food and create plant medicines to sell to people in the neighboring communities. The contemporary family members include the elder Grandma Rita, an astute flower gardener with a thriving cut-flower market business. When Mama Rita summons her adult granddaughter, Nikki, the narrative takes a mysterious tone. Their relationship has become estranged, and Mama Rita is initially too reticent to reveal why she summoned Nikki. She’s described by other readers as prickly and persnickety, too. And yet I was won over in learning she's a vegetarian, like my own great-grandmother.
Dolen Perkins-Valdez gives us such relatable touchpoints throughout. Another, Mama Rita brags she reads nearly 50 books a year! Eventually we learn Grandma Rita is tasking Nikki to use her expertise as a real estate agent to hold onto her home and land. And they make concerted efforts to heal their estranged relationship. Nikki, in the contemporary generation, finds inspiration in learning of her family’s heroic ancestors who endured unjust land loss via heir property laws.
The power of knowing familial connections to place and history expands our futures. The empowerment in place-making as we honor land, history, and heritage feels deeply meaningful. I'm grateful to Dolen Perkins-Valdez for the gift of this story's contextual and historical depth as it connects the real financial and legal challenges across dual timelines and roots in the Reconstruction Era. The author collaborated on a website to honor the actual Kingdom of the Happy Land.
Happy Land, published in 2025, has earned the 2026 Southern Book Prize and was named one of two 2026 Honor Books by The Black Caucus of the American Library Association. It was also longlisted for the 2026 Aspen Words Literary Prize and an NAACP Image Award nominee for Outstanding Literary Work.
Most notable among Dolen Perkins-Valdez’s previous books is Take My Hand, which was awarded the 2023 NAACP Image Award for Outstanding Literary Work-Fiction, the 2023 Black Caucus of the American Library Association Award for Fiction, and the American Bar Association’s Silver Gavel Award recognizing “an outstanding work that fosters the American public’s understanding of law and the legal system.” It was also longlisted for the Mark Twain American Voice in Literature Award. Dolen Perkins-Valdez teaches creative writing at American University in Washington, D.C. Learn more about this author and historian on her website.
Rooted: The American Legacy of Land Theft and the Modern Movement for Black Land Ownership
Referencing information about Happy Land prompted me to pick up Brea Baker’s nonfiction book Rooted: The American Legacy of Land Theft and the Modern Movement for Black Land Ownership. Brea Baker may be a familiar name to many in Lawrence. She visited and spoke at Liberty Hall in 2025, hosted by The Commons at KU. Her debut, published in 2024, is a memoir and social history of land loss in Kentucky and North Carolina — injustices experienced by Indigenous Americans and Black Americans, including Baker’s own family. She emphasizes Black land ownership, facilitates generational wealth, and outlines hopeful pathways to move forward. Most joyfully, Brea and her wife Mariah got married on Baker Acres, their family's land. Brea Baker describes herself as a “freedom fighter and writer” as well as a “queer Black millennial activist working at the intersections of race, gender identity, public safety, and community.” Her website, opens a new window is a content-rich resource.
Kuleana: a Story of Family, Land, and Legacy in Old Hawai'i
One more related nonfiction memoir with emphasis on social justice in connection to land is Kuleana: a Story of Family, Land, and Legacy in Old Hawai'i by Sara Kehaulani Goo, published in 2025. This passionate memoir celebrates family, wild lands, and Indigenous Hawaiian culture. The author includes a brief history of the once independent sovereign Hawaiian Islands. The title Kuleana is an Indigenous Hawaiian word meaning both responsibility and privilege. This is a clear-eyed reckoning of the injustices endured by Native Hawaiians via colonialism, land loss, and the economic challenges of property taxes from rising real estate values. Most Indigenous Hawaiians cannot afford to live on the Island. And many Hawaiians who are living on the Island are house-less. Goo’s family and neighbors become involved and more connected when the property taxes rise 500 percent on their family’s inherited land, land gifted 200 years ago by one of the last Hawaiian kings. Her family works creatively to hold onto the land with this new tax challenge. This life-changing experience compels Goo to learn more of her heritage, including language. A brief glossary of Hawaiian words is included in the back of the book. Sara Kehaulani Goo is a journalist and senior news executive. She’s led news organizations including: Axios, NPR, and The Washington Post. Click here to visit Sara Kehaulani Goo's website, opens a new window to learn more.
Another Opportunity to Connect with the Land
Hopefully I’ve piqued your interest to explore each of these books and possibly enjoy deeper connections to your ancestral homeplace!
And if you’re feeling energized, consider volunteering to work with the crew at the Haskell Greenhouse. Land restoration work is deeply rewarding. Watch their calendar, opens a new window to find out when the community is invited to help.
Being in Lawrence with the Wakarusa and Kansas (Kaw) Rivers, I want to honor and acknowledge local traditional Native lands of the Dakota, Delaware (Lenape), Kansa (Kaw), Kickapoo, Lakota, Osage, Sac and Fox, Shawnee, and hundreds more tribes who find connection here with Haskell Indian Nations University. As Ken Lassman (author of Wild Douglas County, opens a new window and Kaw Valley Almanac, opens a new window) has noted: “Haskell Indian Nations University is the United Nations of tribes, with members of hundreds of tribes coming here over the lifetime of its existence."
Acknowledgements
My gratitude to each of the authors and publishers for sharing their powerful stories.
Thanks to the inspired insight I gleaned from the book discussion of Happy Land by Dolen Perkins-Valdez, led by Cheryl for the group Literary Fiction by People of Color, opens a new window.
Thanks also to J. Drew Lanham, opens a new window for adding homeplace to my lexicon. And congratulations to Dr. Lanham for the forthcoming 10th anniversary edition of his memoir, The Home Place: Memoirs of a Colored Man's Love Affair With Nature, opens a new window!
Cover image credit: Aiyanna Tanyan (Seminole), an aerial photo of the Haskell Wetlands provided by Courtney Eddy King (Peoria), Program & Land Stewardship Manager of the Haskell Greenhouse at Haskell Indian Nations University.
My enduring appreciation to Denise Low, opens a new window for helping me respectfully acknowledge each Native American tribe by their preferred name.
—Shirley Braunlich is a Readers' Services Assistant at Lawrence Public Library.
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