Enter the lives of a Black mixed-race family from New England as characters escape through the underground railroad, fight in the Civil War, and survive the racism of the eugenics movement with fierce love and determination showing up in the next generations.
Spanning over one-hundred years, THE IN-BETWEEN SKY begins in 1852 in Richmond, Virginia where Eliza, a young girl, is forcibly marched in a large coffle with her Ma and Auntie to various cities to be sold further south. Characters escape slavery, find roots in Maine, fight in the Civil War, survive the eugenics movement, and marry across color lines. The modern generation of mixed-race siblings Claude and Ella are haunted by ancestors as they battle the poisons of racism, searching for belonging and home in 1990's San Francisco. They find solace and strength in their bond, but is it enough to survive the pull of the past and the challenges of the present?
THE IN-BETWEEN SKY combines elements of historical fiction, magic realism, and family saga. Comparable titles are: Yaa Gyasi's Homegoing and Charmaine Wilkerson's Black Cake.
Autorentext
Hart's work centers on her Black and Indigenous ancestors from New England, healing intergenerational/historical trauma, mixed-race identity, and uncovering the brutal truth of American history. Hart studied theater at Tisch School of The Arts, New York University (B.F.A.), and education at Saint Mary's College (M.A.). She is a mixed-race Passamaquoddy Native American, Irish, Black, Scottish, and English woman of color. Hart is an author, musician, music educator and mother living in the San Francisco Bay Area.National Book award-winning and best-selling author Isabel Allende introduced Alison and her debut novel Mostly White (Torrey House Press, 2018) at Book Passage in Corte Madera, CA. Isabel Allende praised Mostly White as: "So compelling it gave me goosebumps from the very first lines." Other works include a poetry collection, Temp Words (Cosmo Press, 2015) and selected poems in Red Indian Road West: Native American Poetry in California (Scarlet Tanager, 2016).