Excerpt from These Heathens by Mia McKenzie, plus links to reviews, author biography & more

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One thing needs clearing up right off: Reverend King was not the father. That was a rumor, started by crazy people and repeated by heathens. Reverend King had nothing to do with it. I only met the man once, and it wasn't that kind of meeting. Still, there's been so many insinuations, innuendos, and downright accusations over the last sixty years, I'm left with no choice but to tell the thing, the way it really happened. Which I don't appreciate. I'm old. I want to be lying in a hammock, drinking rum out a coffee mug, not setting records straight. But the Good Lord burdened me with a deep respect for the truth. So, let me say, officially: The father was nobody.

To set the story up right, I got to go back to the beginning.

I was fifteen when Ma got sick, and I had to quit school to help take care of her and Daddy and the boys. I aint want to quit, but nobody asked me what I wanted. I missed school something awful. For the first few months, I'd wonder what they were up to in math class, or what books Mrs. Lucas had assigned in English. A few times, I asked Ma and Daddy if I could go back. They both looked sorry for me, knowing how much I'd liked it, but my family needed me at home, there wasn't any way around that. Maybe once Ma got better. They said that for two years. By the time I was seventeen, I'd long since stopped thinking about school. Or maybe I just didn't have the time or energy to think about it anymore, because Ma had only gotten sicker over those years, which meant there was more to do than ever. Each morning, I got up before everyone else, to open the windows and let fresh air and light into our small house. I spent a few minutes praying and reading my Bible, then went out to feed the chickens and get eggs from the coop. I fixed breakfast for Daddy and the boys, and for myself. Ma aint really eat in the mornings anymore, but I made sure she had fresh water from the well to drink, and I laid out clean clothes for her just in case she wanted to get dressed. I got the boys dressed, and their faces washed as well as I could with them squirming around the whole time. I packed beans and bread, or cold chicken, for Daddy's lunch, and after he left for work, I walked the boys the first quarter mile to school, then let them go on the rest of the way with their friends. When I got back home, I checked in on Ma before cleaning up from breakfast. Then I went out back to start the washing. That was all before eight o'clock, and there was plenty more after that, but I reckon you got the gist. Point is, there wasn't time left in a day for thinking about things I couldn't have—­school or otherwise. I aint have a choice but to do it all, so I did, and I didn't resent it. Jesus watched over me, kept me safe and loved, and I was grateful. I'd be lying if I said I liked my life, but no colored girl in rural Georgia could say that in 1960. She either had it real bad or she had it okay, and I had it okay, right on. So, I thanked God every chance I got and didn't waste time dreaming.

"Close the shades, please," Ma told me one morning when I'd gone in her room to see if she needed anything before I cleaned up from breakfast. "It too bright out today."

It was the middle of October, and the day was cloudy as a cataract, but I went ahead and started closing all the shades, anyhow.

"What wrong with you?"

I turned around and looked at her, confused. "Ma?"

She was raised up on her elbow, peering at me. "It something different about you, child."

I shook my head. Every day was the same, and I was the same every day. I couldn't remember the last time something was different about me.

She stared at me a moment longer, then seemed to run out of interest, or energy, I couldn't tell which. She laid back on the bed and was asleep again before I got out the room.

Excerpted from These Heathens by Mia McKenzie. Copyright © 2025 by Mia McKenzie. Excerpted by permission of Random House. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.