Faith's Reckoning is a story of two Americas, intimately intertwined, yet worlds apart.
This multigenerational novel, set in the South, traverses the period between the 1930's to 1940's and the late 1990's. Through parallel storylines it explores the complex personal relationships between Black and White families and includes three braids:
The Wiggins family, who is part of the pain inflicted by the Jim Crow system, including a daughter who seeks, at the end of her life, to make amends; The Walker family, who responds to that system by helping shape the early civil rights movement, featuring the well-researched history of A. Philip Randolph and the Pullman Porters; And lastly, the descendants of those families who come together to reckon with the legacy left to them. It is the love of the Delta Blues that forges a bond between these descendants and allows them to envision an organization that addresses reparations.
At its core, Faith's Reckoning is a story about reparations for racial injustice. But it is also about the individual restitution we must make in our personal lives.
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Listen to a sample chapter of Faith’s Reckoning, narrated
by author,
Babs Small.
Praise for Faith’s Reckoning
“Faith’s Reckoning is a moral, educational, and thoroughly enjoyable novel about men and women courageous enough to face our country’s history of slavery and racism. Deeply felt and engrossing, it moves deftly back and forth in time to build the story of hard lives in the Depression-era south, the generations that follow, and how one woman measures up to the difficult challenge of making reparations for the wrongs of others and a society. An uplifting celebration of human goodness and possibility.”
Tad Crawford, author, A Floating Life and On Wine-Dark Seas, Arcade Publishing.
“A warm sense of humanity pervades this novel. Faith’s Reckoning is a tender story of redemption and atonement infused with the author’s love of her characters. Immersed in the culture of the South this multigenerational story is both a tale of the awakening of individual conscience and reparation, as well as a genuine introduction to the early struggles of the civil rights movement. The influence of the Blues is beautifully woven through the storyline proving the reconciling and healing power of music.”
Joe Kulin, former publisher, Parabola Magazine
“Soulful and evocative, the story of Faith’s Reckoning is told with a Southern voice that rings with authenticity and compassion for the characters who must survive in the Jim Crow landscape. We see how vastly different these worlds are from the perspectives of a Black family and a White family whose lives are intricately intertwined. Beautifully researched, this novel takes us on a momentous, transformative journey in its quest for justice and healing.”
Susan S. Scott, author, Healing With Nature, Skyhorse Publishing
“Faith’s Reckoning is a courageous gem of historical fiction, revealing little known but important aspects of the history of racism and social injustice in the Deep South, spanning the time of the 1930’s to the 1990’s. I am grateful to learn about the vital role that Black Pullman Porters played in the early days of the civil rights movement, something my education never taught me. As a writer and Southerner myself, I appreciate the author’s authentic Southern voice, and the gift of her storytelling ways. I relish her vivid descriptions of trains and rails, Mississippi back roads, sweltering summer nights, grits and tamales, and the powerful presence of Delta Blues music dancing through the pages. Most of all, I love her characters, and how they set up house in one’s heart, and linger in one’s mind, long after their stories end. Reading Faith’s Reckoning now, when issues of racism and social injustice need our full attention and care, can become an act of faith in itself, part of the greater recognition and awareness so needed for our time.”
Lucinda Herring, author, Reimagining Death: Stories and Practical Wisdom for Home Funerals and Green Burials, North Atlantic Books
“BREAKING NEWS. SCREAMING HEADLINES. Urgent commentaries. The daily shock of racial violence, institutional racism, ubiquitous inequities floods our awareness, immerses us. Yet, the intensity of affect has a strange distancing effect, inuring us to the horror. The very “nowness,” the standstill of time, freezes out the real story, like a photograph. The power of the novel form is that, when well written, the depth of story emerges. Faith’s Reckoning is such a novel. It frees time from the now by alternating the telling from the 1930s and the 1990s. It takes time to allow us to get to know and to feel the full fabric of the characters against the backdrop of genuine history. We are drawn into the intimacy of White and Black families and the entanglements that kindle the violence of events rending this intimacy, forcing us to feel deeply. There is no distance. And in this way, we can begin to understand our deep complicity in realities that continue to haunt us. Is there an answer? Barbara Small’s deeply moving story makes a persuasive case for the much-needed healing medicine: the power of truth, the power of music, and most of all, the power of love.”
Russell A. Lockhart, PhD, author, Words As Eggs and Psyche Speaks, The Lockhart Press
Faith’s Reckoning is available for purchase.
Available at Bookshop.org, Amazon and Barnes & Noble