Absalom’s Daughters: A Novel

Summary

Two half sisters, one black and one white, embark on a risky road trip through the Jim Crow South of the 1950s in this spellbinding story of identity and race.

Self-educated and brown skinned, Cassie works full time in her grandmother’s laundry in rural Mississippi. Illiterate and white, Judith falls for “colored music” and dreams of life as a big-city radio star. These teenage girls are half sisters. And when they catch wind of their wayward father’s inheritance coming down in Virginia, they hitch their hopes on a road trip together to claim what’s rightly theirs.

In an old junk car, with a frying pan, a ham, and a few dollars hidden in a shoe, they set off through the Deep South of the 1950s, a bewitchingly beautiful landscape as well as one bedeviled by racial strife and violence. Suzanne Feldman’s Absalom’s Daughters combines the buddy movie, the coming-of-age tale, and a dash of magical realism to enthrall and move us with an unforgettable, illuminating novel.