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Dolen Perkins-Valdez

Biography

Dolen Perkins-Valdez

Dolen Perkins-Valdez is the New York Times bestselling author of WENCH, BALM and TAKE MY HAND. She was a finalist for two NAACP Image Awards and the Hurston/Wright Legacy Award for fiction, and she was awarded the First Novelist Award by the Black Caucus of the American Library Association. She lives in Washington, DC with her family.

Dolen Perkins-Valdez

Books by Dolen Perkins-Valdez

by Dolen Perkins-Valdez - Fiction, Women's Fiction

Montgomery, Alabama, 1973. Fresh out of nursing school, Civil Townsend intends to make a difference, especially in her African American community. At the Montgomery Family Planning Clinic, she hopes to help women shape their destinies, to make their own choices for their lives and bodies. But when her first week on the job takes her along a dusty country road to a worn-down one-room cabin, she is shocked to learn that her new patients, Erica and India, are just 11 and 13 years old. As Civil grapples with her role, she takes India, Erica and their family into her heart. Until one day she arrives at their door to learn the unthinkable has happened, and nothing will ever be the same for any of them.

by Dolen Perkins-Valdez - Fiction, Historical Fiction

The Civil War has ended, and Madge, Sadie and Hemp have each come to Chicago in search of a new life. Born with magical hands, Madge has the power to discern others’ suffering, but she cannot heal her own damaged heart. Sadie can commune with the dead, but until she makes peace with her father, she, too, cannot fully engage her gift. Searching for his missing family, Hemp arrives in this northern city that shimmers with possibility. But redemption cannot be possible until he is reunited with those taken from him.

by Dolen Perkins-Valdez - Fiction, Historical Fiction

Wench by Dolen Perkins-Valdez is startling and original fiction that raises provocative questions of power and freedom, love and dependence. An enchanting and unforgettable novel based on little-known fact, Wench combines the narrative allure of CANE RIVER by Lalita Tademy and the moral complexities of Edward P. Jones’s THE KNOWN WORLD as it tells the story of four black enslaved women in the years preceding the Civil War.