One Blood -- Denene Millner, Hardcover

"In delicious, decadent prose, Denene Millner does what few authors can-compose a sprawling multigenerational tale that is necessary American reading. One Blood sings the song of the South in a voice that is heartbreaking, hopeful, and resilient. A masterpiece."
-Tara M. Stringfellow, National Bestselling author of Memphis

Join New York Times bestselling author Denene Millner as she explores the lives of three generations of women tied together by love, hope, dreams, ambition...and family secrets in this epic novel.

Meet Grace: raised by her beloved grandmother in tension-filled, post-segregation Virginia, Grace is barely a teenager when she loses her grandmother. Shellshocked, she is shipped up North to live with her formidably ambitious Aunt Hattie―a woman who firmly left behind her Southern roots in pursuit of upward mobility. Feeling like a fish out of water in the high society world filled with fancy teas and coveted debutante balls, Grace's only place of comfort is with the smart, handsome son of one of the society's grand dames.

Meet Delores: beautiful, intelligent and fierce, Delores a.k.a. Lolo has never had it easy. Once she makes it 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 mooring: get married and have a family of her own. 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.

Meet Rae: when Lolo's headstrong daughter, Rae discovers that she is adopted, it's just one secret among others that her family is keeping. When Rae finds out that she's 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, and often complicated, struggle with what it truly means to be to be family.

Author: Denene Millner
Publisher: Forge
Published: 09/05/2023
Pages: 432
Binding Type: Hardcover
Weight: 1.38lbs
Size: 9.55h x 6.51w x 1.37d
ISBN: 9781250276193

Review Citation(s):
Library Journal Prepub Alert 04/01/2023 pg. 9
Kirkus Reviews 07/15/2023

About the Author
DENENE MILLLNER is a six-time New York Times best-selling author, Emmy Award-nominated TV show host and award-winning journalist who has written more than 30 books, among them Taraji P. Henson's Around the Way Girl, and the picture book Early Sunday Morning. The Atlanta-based writer and editor is also the editorial director of Denene Millner Books, an award-winning imprint that publishes stories featuring Black children and families, by Black authors and illustrators. The DMB list includes two Caldecott Honor books, a Kirkus Prize for Children's Literature two Society for Illustrator honors, three NAACP nominations and a Southern Book Award. Denene also co-hosts the nationally syndicated PBS show, A Seat at the Table, and is the host of "Speakeasy with Denene," a podcast exploring Black culture. Denene lives in Atlanta with her two daughters and their goldendoodle, Franklin.