ABOUT
THE BOOK

The Wake of the Wind is J. California Cooper’s third novel, and her most penetrating look yet at the challenges that generations of African-Americans have had to overcome in order to carve out a home and future for themselves and their families. Set in the South in the waning years of the Civil War, this is the dramatic story of a remarkable heroine, Lifee, and her husband, Mor. When emancipation finally comes to Texas, Mor, Lifee, and their family set out in search of hope and a piece of land they can work and call their own. Miraculously, they manage not only to survive, but to succeed – their crops grow, their children thrive, they educate themselves and others. But the South during the Reconstruction is not a place that takes kindly to the achievements of former slaves, and as lynchings and injustice become a plague across the region, time and time again they must make the anguished decision to leave their land in search of a safer place. Land, however, is the least of their worldly possessions. Lifee and Mor are the descendants of a long and vital line. Having used their intelligence, strength, and ingenuity to make their place in the new post-Civil War world, they in turn pass those talents along to their children – the next generation to surge forward, accomplishing more than their parents could even dream. At once tragic and triumphant, this epic story that captures with extraordinary authenticity the most important struggle of the last hundred years.