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

"Millner is a great teller, sharing each woman’s story with brutal reality, the kind that can shock you emotionless, but also with a lightness that feels like skipping. It’s a mix you can’t miss. Readers who want a novel that includes a little bit of last-century history and current events will eat this book up. “One Blood” is a book you’ll drop everything to read." - Terri Schlichenmeyer, The Washington Informer

"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

"Millner beautifully limns the experiences of a woman who must give up her child, a mother who has adopted, and Black women everywhere who must negotiate the roles of wife and mother while entertaining their own dreams." —Library Journal

★ 09/01/2023

Director of the eponymous Caldecott- and Newberry-honored imprint and a New York Times best-selling author of mostly YA titles, Millner beautifully limns the experiences of a woman who must give up her child, a mother who has adopted, and Black women everywhere who must negotiate the roles of wife and mother while entertaining their own dreams, all circumscribed by racism. Raised in Virginia by a midwife grandmother who still embraces the old ways, Grace is sent north to New York City after tragedy to live with a snippy aunt who denies her roots and has insinuated herself into the city's Black royalty. After bonding with a neighborhood boy who introduces her to the civil rights movement, Grace gets pregnant. Meanwhile, Lolo has fled her own tragedy for New York and has her own reasons to adopt. Thrumming with near-biblical cadence and enfolding a history of Black struggle, the narrative moves through Lolo's own struggles with marriage and motherhood (and her realization that "a simple loving act connected her not only to this little girl but also to her own mother"), finally bringing the novel to her adult daughter, Rae. VERDICT A bracing and important read with insights into adoption and motherhood, ending with the heartening words, "She wasn't afraid. She was doing her best. She was free."—Barbara Hoffert

2023-06-21
What does it take to save your own life?

Millner presents a searing chronicle of generations of Black women in the U.S. as they deal with forces, large and small, depriving them of freedom, dignity, and a sense of self-worth. Spanning the tumultuous years from 1965 to 2004, the stories of Grace, LoLo, and Rae—and their forebears and contemporary relatives—illustrate the battles fought for survival on the domestic front as other struggles played out on the streets and in the workplace. When Grace is cruelly stripped of the protection and guidance of her beloved grandmother, Maw Maw Rubelle, and sent to live with an unsympathetic aunt in Brooklyn, her country ways and spiritual beliefs cannot protect her from the social and class prejudices she encounters there. (The heartbreaking result of Grace’s brief experience of happiness provides the thread binding the three women together.) LoLo, a victim of neglect and sexual violence in her early years, carries secrets and scars of her own. Determined to seek protection and stability in life, LoLo marries a seemingly “good” man and raises a family with him; she is especially determined to protect her daughter from the degradations she suffered at the hands of men and an unwelcoming greater society. Rae, one of LoLo’s two adopted children, senses an emotional reserve in LoLo and is an eyewitness to her mother’s misery in the face of suffocating social conventions and domestic drudgery. As the layers of secrets surrounding LoLo’s and Rae’s circumstances drop away, Millner explores the ways Black women searched out paths to survival for themselves and their families (often at tremendous personal cost). Echoes of determined earlier choices echo in the lives of subsequent generations in Millner’s gripping saga.

Strength and love flow through Millner’s story.