Wade in the Water by Dorothy Mallory Jones
WADE IN THE WATER by Dorothy Mallory Jones is an homage to the many generations of souls denied the opportunity to become their best selves.
It is a story told through the voice of ninety year old Ava Woods. Born in 1900 to a family of hard-pressed sharecroppers with a passel of kids, Ava relates poignant and often harrowing stories of life in her blended family with its wise and harried mother, volatile and troubled father, and rambunctious siblings.
The skillful narrative and character development foreground the twin perils of sharecropping in the post-Reconstruction South and the harsh reality of Jim Crow segregation - facts of life which are never far from mind. As Ava's mother, Lena, once remarked, “We live too close to our bellies.”
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Dorothy Mallory Jones - poet, historian, and Chicago native - is a child of the Great Migration and the Great Depression and she draws on the stories she heard as a child when she visited the Kentucky farm of her ancestors. In WADE IN THE WATER, she deftly tells one of countless stories of hope, longing, and shattered dreams – stories that so often go untold and unappreciated but remain, nonetheless, integral to the story of America. Jones passed away in 2019 at the age of ninety-nine.
WADE IN THE WATER by Dorothy Mallory Jones is an homage to the many generations of souls denied the opportunity to become their best selves.
It is a story told through the voice of ninety year old Ava Woods. Born in 1900 to a family of hard-pressed sharecroppers with a passel of kids, Ava relates poignant and often harrowing stories of life in her blended family with its wise and harried mother, volatile and troubled father, and rambunctious siblings.
The skillful narrative and character development foreground the twin perils of sharecropping in the post-Reconstruction South and the harsh reality of Jim Crow segregation - facts of life which are never far from mind. As Ava's mother, Lena, once remarked, “We live too close to our bellies.”
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Dorothy Mallory Jones - poet, historian, and Chicago native - is a child of the Great Migration and the Great Depression and she draws on the stories she heard as a child when she visited the Kentucky farm of her ancestors. In WADE IN THE WATER, she deftly tells one of countless stories of hope, longing, and shattered dreams – stories that so often go untold and unappreciated but remain, nonetheless, integral to the story of America. Jones passed away in 2019 at the age of ninety-nine.
WADE IN THE WATER by Dorothy Mallory Jones is an homage to the many generations of souls denied the opportunity to become their best selves.
It is a story told through the voice of ninety year old Ava Woods. Born in 1900 to a family of hard-pressed sharecroppers with a passel of kids, Ava relates poignant and often harrowing stories of life in her blended family with its wise and harried mother, volatile and troubled father, and rambunctious siblings.
The skillful narrative and character development foreground the twin perils of sharecropping in the post-Reconstruction South and the harsh reality of Jim Crow segregation - facts of life which are never far from mind. As Ava's mother, Lena, once remarked, “We live too close to our bellies.”
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Dorothy Mallory Jones - poet, historian, and Chicago native - is a child of the Great Migration and the Great Depression and she draws on the stories she heard as a child when she visited the Kentucky farm of her ancestors. In WADE IN THE WATER, she deftly tells one of countless stories of hope, longing, and shattered dreams – stories that so often go untold and unappreciated but remain, nonetheless, integral to the story of America. Jones passed away in 2019 at the age of ninety-nine.