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Start giftingOne Blood
A Novel
Length
18 hours 59 minutes
Language
English
Narrators
Bahni Turpin, Joniece Abbott-Pratt & Tina Lifford
This audiobook uses AI narration.
We’re taking steps to make sure AI narration is transparent.
Learn moreBookseller recommendation
“This multigenerational story of five Black women, four bound by blood and a legacy of powerful visions, carries us from the post-segregation South through the 1960s civil rights movement into the continuing racial and gender struggles of the early 2000s. These strong women navigate the tragedies and joys of their lives with dignity and grace. Often heart-wrenching, this beautifully written novel is a powerful examination of the effects of generational trauma. ”
— Nancy • Raven Book Store
This program features multicast narration. It also includes a poem, book club reading guide, and acknowledgments, all read by the author.
Homegoing meets The Mothers where three women are tied together by blood, love, and family secrets in this searing novel by New York Times bestseller Denene Millner.
Raised by her beloved grandmother in tension-filled, post-segregation Virginia, Grace is barely a teenager when she loses her Maw Maw. Shellshocked, she is shipped up North to live with her formidably ambitious Aunt Hattie—a woman who firmly left behind her “undesirable” Southern roots in pursuit of upward mobility. Thrust into the world of the Black and socially ambitious, Grace finds herself trapped in a society of stifling respectability, fancy teas, and coveted debutante balls. Feeling like a fish out of water, Grace’s only place of sweet comfort is with the smart, handsome son of one of the society’s grand dames. However, when Dale gets caught up in a racial police killing and Grace ends up pregnant, she is quickly hidden away and he is promptly shipped off to college. Then in the ultimate act of betrayal, Grace is deceived by Hattie, and her brand new baby girl is given up for adoption.
Beautiful, intelligent and fierce, Delores a.k.a. Lolo has never had it easy. Her life has been riddled with pain and loss. Once she makes it up north, she puts aside her dream of being a model to do what she has to do to survive as a woman with little money and no mooring: get married and have a family of her own. And she will tell lies and keep secrets to obtain it. Then Lolo does have it all: a doting husband, a beautiful son and daughter, and a lovely home. When secrets start to spill out and she and her family slowly begin to unravel, Lolo is willing to do whatever it takes to keep her dream intact and those she loves together.
When Lolo’s headstrong daughter, Rae discovers that she is adopted, it is just one secret among others that her family is keeping. Not out of a desire to deceive, but out of a determination to survive and protect. When Rae finds out that she is about to become a mother herself, she knows that there is an important reckoning that must be faced about herself and her two mothers.
Potent, poetic, powerful, told with deep love, and spanning from the Great Migration to the civil unrest of the 1960s to the quest for women’s equality in early 2000s, Denene Millner’s beautifully wrought novel explores three women’s intimate struggle with generational trauma and healing.
A Macmillan Audio production from Tor Forge Books.
DENENE MILLLNER is a six-time New York Times bestselling author, Emmy Award–nominated TV show host and award-winning journalist who has written thirty-one books, among them Taraji P. Henson’s Around the Way Girl and the picture book Early Sunday Morning. Millner is also the editorial director of Denene Millner Books, an award-winning imprint that has published two Caldecott Honor books, a Newbery Honor Book, the Kirkus Prize for Children’s Literature and a Southern Book Award. A MacDowell Fellow, Millner has written essays for the New York Times, Glamour and NPR, which hosted her critically-acclaimed podcast, “Speakeasy with Denene.” Millner is a graduate of Hofstra University. She lives in Atlanta with her two daughters and their goldendoodle, Franklin.
DeneneMillner.com
Twitter: @MyBrownBaby
Instagram: @MyBrownBaby
Facebook: Denene Millner
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Reviews
“In delicious, decadent prose, Denene Millner does what few authors can--compose a sprawling multigenerational tale that is necessary American reading. One Blood sings the song of the South in a voice that is heartbreaking, hopeful, and resilient. A masterpiece.” -Tara M. Stringfellow, National Bestselling author of Memphis
"One Blood is the haunting, yet wonderfully written story of three women, Grace, LoLo and Rae, who are connected through time, circumstances…and more than just blood. From the first pages, Denene Millner had me captivated with the intimate stories and too many heartbreaking moments of these women as they struggled against every adversity, fighting to find their place and their voice in this world. With prose that was so beautiful, I often paused to read a sentence twice, I was left thinking about these women and how their lives were eternally linked, long after I finished this amazing novel." - New York Times bestselling author Victoria Christopher Murray
"Denene Millner is a masterful weaver of words, characters, and worlds. ONE BLOOD is a beautiful, brilliant American epic that speaks to Black motherhood, female relationship, marriage, family, legacy, love and healing. It is simultaneously deeply intimate and grandly sweeping."--Tarana Burke, New York Times bestselling author of Unbound: My Story of Liberation and the Birth of the Me Too Movement
"Clear your calendar before you turn the first page of Denene Miller’s irresistibly engaging One Blood because you won’t be able to put this compulsively readable novel aside once you start. A profound meditation on generational trauma, Miller’s characters leap off the page. Grace, Lolo, and Rae’s stories will become your stories, stories that will linger long after you turn the final page." - Sarah Bird, author of Daughter of a Daughter of a Queen
"From high atop the many shoulders of our orating Black Southern Mothers, Denene Milner mouths out their memories to us using the cultural significance of afro-centric contributions to worldly existence. Milner empowers us by her use of the beauty of our blood tale; our womanhoodly power to populate a community, a society, a world, a planet. Now THAT is power! And Milner weaves prose about family that is familiar, like your family, fictive family or so-and-so’s family. We find in ourselves the residue of each character: a little bit of MawMaw or Lolo or Rae or Roman or Skye or Diego. In many kinds of way, Milner is in her element when she speaks of African American Mothers. This volume is a unique examination of family social structure that both Sociologists and Anthropologists would appreciate chatting about. The beauty of this tale lies in the intergenerational relationship between three women. The deep examination of the shifting, changing roles and statuses they take on." -Lucy Anne Hurston, author of Speak, So You Can Speak Again: A Life of Zora Neale Hurston