100 books like The Family Tree

I loved this book because of Twitty’s fearless and honest voice and how, as a gay and Jewish Black man, he reached for his innermost self through Southern travels, finding his culinary family along the way. Twitty has pieced together so many components–cooking, history, memoir, genealogy, discoveries as he travels to research, and even religion and sexual orientation issues.

Reading it, I was educated and entertained. I learned how much our American culinary culture contains influences from African Americans all the way back to the beginning of slavery. I also loved that it is a book of triumph as well as a lesson in good writing. There are even some recipes!

Growing up in the South and having a penchant for writing about racial justice, genealogy, travel, truth-telling, and more, this book is among the top ones on my favorite list. The South is more complicated than many think. Along with the racists and bigots, there are plenty of really smart people who are progressive and thoughtful. Good writers sprout like the wild primroses in Alabama. I liked how Perry stirs together history with her travels and her own dear ancestors.

Perry starts her explorations with Harper’s Ferry, which brought back my vivid memories of its spectacular scenery. It still holds onto John Brown, but there is so much more, which she explains. There are plenty of nuanced stories and surprises as she travels across state after state. 

I no longer remember how, around 2018, I discovered this remarkable 1850 travelogue and presentation of observations on slavery by the man most people know as a landscape architect. Before his landscaping, Olmstead was hired by the now New York Times to travel the South interviewing and recording all he could from whites, whether rich or poor, slave owners or not, and enslaved Blacks. An added treasure: I loved reading about his travel experiences by boat, horse, train, and stagecoach, as well as the challenges of finding places to overnight. 

The horrors of slavery come through without any preaching. I still think about this book a lot and what I learned from it–aspects of Southern life in the 1850s presented by someone trying to be fair and observant without a special agenda. 

This book has a lot of genealogy and spinoffs, which demonstrate all the reasons I love genealogy and, hence, love this book. Newton digs into her past and uncovers secrets and more, which leads to her knowing herself better as well as her family.

I really liked that she delved into associated topics such as kin and why they matter, epigenetics, a critique of DNA websites, spiritual practices, and connecting with and honoring one’s ancestors. I agree with what she writes, “We can see more clearly where we need to go, how we may best live if we know precisely in our bones, who and where we came from.” Since this is also my theme, of course, I enjoyed reading her exploration and take on all this.

This intricately written story sparked my interest from the very first page. Every time the author introduced a clue to the plot, I immediately wanted to know what it meant and what was coming. I was “chomping at the bit” as they say, and there was never one moment where the story lagged. Every single sentence needed to be there and the mystery had layer after layer with no way to ever predict what would happen. This is a historical fiction writer who definitely understands how to weave a top-notch suspenseful tale, and that’s what this is. 

I love reading uplifting stories showing how the actions of others can affect our lives, and this emotionally engaging story was a fascinating read.

A dual timeline story, about Mattie and granddaughter Ashlee, it relates how Mattie made an important decision after witnessing Rose Parkes’ refusal to give up her seat. Years later, Ashlee is a young, successful lawyer who also has an important decision to make. She returns to her family home to visit her dying grandmother, Mattie.

As she reads the story her grandmother has written Ashlee realises that it is the real story of her grandmother’s life, and reading it has a big impact on Ashlee’s life and decisions. Beautifully told, with strong, warm characters.

In 1946, two African American couples were lynched in rural Georgia by a white mob. Grooms fictionalized that account from the perspective of one of the victims, perpetrators, and a pre-teen eyewitness and in the process comes to terms with redemption, race, and violence not only in the South but in the nation as well. Grooms has the ability to juxtapose the beauty of the Southern landscape with the horrors that have occurred there with breathtaking imagery and conciseness. This book not just deals with the victims of such horrific acts, but the often untold damage done to the progeny of those who perpetrated the act. This is a fiction that will always be relevant as long as a nation struggles with injustice, oppression, and white supremacy.  

I first met Alafair Burke after my first book was accepted for publication (at a book reading she was giving) and she was extremely generous with her time and advice about being a crime-fiction writer. I’ve read most of her books, but this is my favorite, combining first-rate knowledge of the legal system with long-hidden family secrets and resentments. 

Book of the Little Axe follows one woman at two ends of her life, spanning from the late 1700s to the early 1800s.

One thread follows who she will become—“Ma,” wife to an Apsáalooke man and mother to three children—and the woman she was before, “Rosa,” a daughter and sister in Trinidad. A third thread follows a man named Creadon’s diary.

This book explores so many important and complex topics like what it means to be family, what it means to belong, and what it means to accept yourself. I loved how deep Francis-Sharma dives into the feelings of shame and pride and fear that the characters feel.

I felt those same things and it made me physically ache for them.

While not your typical cut-and-dried cold case mystery—the first half of this suspense thriller centers around the present-day case of Maddie Lane, a 12-year-old girl who is either a runaway or abducted from her bedroom—the second half is set four years in the future, and in my opinion, this is where the book really comes into its own. I found the past/present structure—no back and forth, no fancy flashbacks—refreshing, and Mofina does a fine job detailing the scrutiny Maddie’s family faces in the aftermath of her disappearance, while slowly and methodically revealing not only their secrets but their feelings of guilt.