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Book Reviewed by:A woman learns the incredible story of a real-life American Kingdom—and her family's ties to it—in this enthralling novel from the New York Times bestselling, NAACP Image Award-winning author of Take My Hand.
Nikki hasn't seen her grandmother in years. So when the elder calls out of the blue with an urgent request for Nikki to visit her in the hills of western North Carolina, Nikki hesitates only for a moment. After years of silence in her family, due to a mysterious estrangement between her mother and grandmother, she's determined to learn the truth while she still can.
But instead of answers about the recent past, Mother Rita tells Nikki an incredible story of a kingdom on this very mountain, and of her great-great-great grandmother, Luella, who would become its queen.
It sounds like the makings of a fairy tale—royalty among a community of freed people. But the more Nikki learns about the Kingdom of the Happy Land, and the lives of those who dwelled in the ruins she discovers in the woods, the more she realizes how much of her identity and her family's secrets are wrapped up in these hills. Because this land is their legacy, and it will be up to her to protect it before it, like so much else, is stolen away.
Inspired by true events, Happy Land is a transporting multi-generational novel about the stories that shape us and the dazzling courage it takes to dream.
One
Nikki
The only thing I know about my grandmother's home is that it's in an isolated area of the Blue Ridge Mountains in Zirconia, North Carolina. And the only thing I know about Zirconia is that it's right outside Hendersonville. And what I know about Hendersonville is that it has a lot of apple orchards. A shame, I know.
The old 25 highway is two lanes without a line in the middle. I pass a wood-frame house that must be at least a hundred years old, a neat and tidy brick rambler with rockers lining the front porch. Stuffed fairies hang from tree limbs, and a motionless cat stares at me from a front yard.
I wind the rental car around a series of camp entrances. Camp Greystone. Camp Arrowhead. Houses on tall wooden piles perch around a sign labeled Lake Summit. Just a few miles past the lake, I pass the granite cliff Mother Rita mentioned over the phone, and just after that I reach the entrance to her property.
Lovejoy Lane.
When I was born, I was given my mama's maiden name hyphenated ...
What are you reading this week? (5/1/2025)
Just finished Happy Land by Dolen Perkins-Valdez and really enjoyed it ! The writing is beautiful and the story (based on true events) is superbly portrayed.
-Laurie_L
What are you reading this week? (04/10/2025)
I have had Happy Land by Dolen Perkins-Valdez on hold for ages. NPR featured an interview with the author just this past Sunday wherein the importance of speaking with older family members so as...
-Sunny
What are you reading this week? (2024-10-31)
I loved Take My Hand by Dolen Perkins-Valdez. Looking forward to Happy Land.
-Gabi_J
Hidden history is fascinating to me. It's all those untold and under-told stories I've discovered in historical fiction. Happy Land is a perfect example. The author presents the facts of the existence of the Kingdom of Happy Land interwoven in a fictional family history, thus animating what may otherwise have been a mere footnote in post Civil War history (Donna D). Happy Land provides stunning insight into a real group of freedpeople who established their own community. The characters' connection and linkage to the land was beautifully told and so impactful (Emily B). It is amazing how little we know of the history of certain people and places. I never knew there was a "Kingdom of Happy Land" up in the North Carolina mountains with an honest to goodness King and Queen (Debra F)...continued
Full Review
(610 words)
(Reviewed by First Impressions Reviewers).
Charmaine Wilkerson, New York Times bestselling author of Black Cake
What a story! Happy Land is an exhilarating tale of perseverance, identity, and love that echoes across generations. This story of formerly enslaved families in the Blue Ridge Mountains who built a community against all odds will stay with me for a long time. Honorée Fanonne Jeffers, New York Times bestselling author of The Love Songs of W.E.B. Du Bois
No one writes the historical novel quite like Dolen Perkins-Valdez, and with Happy Land, she's at her brilliant best, opening History's treasure-filled chest—and then, bringing that history to life. Here is the Ancestor who cried, laughed, and hoped before any of us were born. Here is the vulnerable earth that tenders its secrets. In Happy Land, Perkins-Valdez offers the knowledge that we surely need: to move forward, we must understand what came before. Her existing fans will be so satisfied—and her new readers will be captivated. Jodi Picoult, #1 New York Times bestselling author of By Any Other Name
Picture a time when a kingdom existed inside the confines of the Carolinas—a time when freedpeople were royalty. What if that was your history, instead of the trauma of enslavement and generational poverty? As Dolen Perkins-Valdez says in this astonishing, historical-based novel—a family tree isn't just something you draw on paper. It's only when you're rooted in the soil that your family once inhabited that your imagination can brush the sky.
Happy Land by Dolen Perkins-Valdez, which follows a group of formerly enslaved people who build a self-sustaining community on a mountainous plot of land in the Carolinas during the Reconstruction era, is based on a real-life historical place known as the Kingdom of the Happy Land. Perkins-Valdez stumbled upon the kingdom's history online while exploring a newfound interest in North Carolina banjo music. She was soon drawn into the story of this group of freed Black people who lived communally in a society based on African traditions, ruled by a king and queen: "It sounded like something made-up. A fairytale. But it was real, a feat of imagination and economic empowerment that few people have documented in our nation's history."
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