Happy Land

I've loved Dolen Perkins-Valdez's work in the past, especially her 2022 novel Take My Hand, which was one of my favorite books that year. I decided to listen to her 2025 release on audio, largely because Bahni Turpin narrates, along with Ashley J. Hobbs. Once again, here she takes inspiration from lesser-explored history that deserves to be better known. Happy Land is about the “kingdom” established in 1873 in North Carolina by a group of freedpeople looking to escape white terrorist violence in nearby Spartanburg County SC, where they lived. This kingdom named a king and queen, formed a communal treasury, and eventually purchased land spread across the NC/SC state line. The story unfolds in two timelines: the first follows Luella, Happy Land’s first queen, and the second contemporary timeline follows her descendant Nikki. The stories are linked by the ancestral line and also by the fuller story of African American land loss in the 20th century. Perkins-Valdez excels at making history come alive through her rich historical details.