The Wake of the Wind

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Doubleday, 1998 - Fiction - 373 pages
The challenges that generations of African Americans have had to overcome in order to carve out a home for themselves and their families. Set in Texas in the waning years of the Civil War, the novel tells the dramatic story of a remarkable heroine, Lifee, and her husband, Mor. When Emancipation finally comes to Texas, Mor, Lifee, and the extended family they create from other slaves who are also looking for a home and a future, set out in search of a piece of land they can call their own. In the face of constant threats, they manage not only to survive but to succeed -- their crops grow, their children thrive, they educate themselves and others. Lifee and Mor pass their intelligence, determination, and talents along to their children, the next generation to surge forward. At once tragic and triumphant, this is an epic story that captures with extraordinary authenticity the most important struggle of the last hundred years.

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Contents

Section 1
1
Section 2
28
Section 3
43
Copyright

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About the author (1998)

J. California Cooper was born in Berkeley, California in 1932. She was an award-winning playwright, novelist, and short story writer. She wrote 17 plays and received a 1978 Black Playwright Award for Strangers. She wrote several short story collections including A Piece of Mine, Wild Stars Seeking Midnight Suns, and The Future Has a Past. Homemade Love received the 1989 American Book Award and Funny Valentine was made into a 1999 TV movie. Her novels included Family, The Wake of the Wind, Life Is Short but Wide, and Some People, Some Other Place. She received the James Baldwin Award and the Literary Lion Award from the American Library Association in 1988. She died on September 20, 2014 at the age of 82.

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