Happy Land

A woman learns the incredible story of a real-life American Kingdom--and her family's ties to it--in this enthralling novel from the New York Times bestselling, NAACP Image Award-winning author of Take My Hand.

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Nikki hasn't seen her grandmother in years. So when the elder calls out of the blue with an urgent request for Nikki to visit her in the hills of western North Carolina, Nikki hesitates only for a moment. After years of silence in her family, due to a mysterious estrangement between her mother and grandmother, she's determined to learn the truth while she still can.

But instead of answers about the recent past, Mother Rita tells Nikki an incredible story of a kingdom on this very mountain, and of her great-great-great grandmother, Luella, who would become its queen.

It sounds like the makings of a fairy tale--royalty among a community of freed people. But the more Nikki learns about the Kingdom of the Happy Land, and the lives of those who dwelled in the ruins she discovers in the woods, the more she realizes how much of her identity and her family's secrets are wrapped up in these hills. Because this land is their legacy, and it will be up to her to protect it before it, like so much else, is stolen away.

Inspired by true events, Happy Land is a transporting multi-generational novel about the stories that shape us and the dazzling courage it takes to dream.

Author: Dolen Perkins-Valdez
Publisher: Berkley Books
Published: 04/08/2025
Pages: 368
Binding Type: Hardcover
Weight: 1.26lbs
Size: 9.28h x 6.07w x 1.25d
ISBN: 9780593337721


Review Citation(s):
Library Journal 01/01/2025 pg. 1
Publishers Weekly 02/17/2025
Booklist 03/01/2025 pg. 60
BookPage 04/01/2025
Shelf Awareness 04/06/2025

About the Author
Dolen Perkins-Valdez is the New York Times bestselling author of Take My Hand (2022), which was awarded an NAACP Image Award for Outstanding Literary Work, a Silver Gavel Award from the American Bar Association, and a Fiction award from the Black Caucus American Library Association, and was long-listed for the Mark Twain American Voice in Literature Award. A three-time nominee for a United States Artists Fellowship, Dolen is widely considered a preeminent chronicler of American historical life.