The Queen of Palmyra

by Minrose Gwin

Book Overview

"The most powerful and also the most lyrical novel about race, racism, and denial in the American South since To Kill a Mockingbird."
-- Lee Smith, author of On Agate Hill

"Exquisitely beautiful... The novel grips the reader from its first page and relentlessly drives us to its conclusion."
-- William Ferris, author of Give My Poor Heart Ease: Voices of the Mississippi Blues

An atmospheric debut novel about growing up in the...

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0061840327
• ISBN13: 9780061840326
• Release Date: April 2010
• Publisher: William Morrow & Company
• Length: 416 Pages
• Weight: 0.74 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.0" x 5.3" x 8.0"

Customer Reviews

A MUST read ,especially for Southerners..hard to put down..

I'm about 3/4 through with this book, and it is wonderful...especially if you grew up in the South in the '60's, like I did, and had a Black Nanny, whom I just adored. Every chapter has a surprise.. no where does it drag.. I feel as though I'ved lived some parts of the main character, a little girl, named, Florence.. Expect this book to be on on the Best Seller list like "THE HELP". BUT, this is better!!!!

Reviews from Brizmus Blogs Books

I actually gave this book 4 1/2 stars. Minrose Gwin is one of those writers that just knows what she's doing. It doesn't seem like she just woke up one day and decided to write a book. It seems more like she worked hard at it and studied and learned how to become a writer. Which is a good thing. Her prose felt so perfect and natural that it just seemed like it had to have been learned. No one with that amount of talent could have just "decided to have a book" and miraculously have it turn out as the Queen of Palmyra. It is just too well-written. The Queen of Palmyra is a deeply touching, deeply affecting novel. 11-year old Florence grows up in 1963 in Mississippi. Her education is lacking, and her loyalties are separated between her cake-baking mother and her racist father, who allows her to practically be raised by her grandparents' black maid. Through Florence's uncomprehending eyes, the reader comes to understand just how horrifying it must have been to grow up in small town Mississippi during this time. She loves her father, and she loves her mother, and she loves Zenie, and she is completely oblivious to the tension between them. It is Florence's innocence, really, that makes this book so amazing. Somehow, Minrose Gwin manages to reveal all to the reader through a narrator that didn't understand all. She composes an intricate, complicated story with well-developed characters and believable, torturous events. I have no doubt in my mind that some of these things probably happened. Nothing could have prepared me for my reaction to this book. I'd heard that it was painful, I'd heard that it hurt to read, but it was more than that. Florence's innocence and the way she was just pulled along by the events, by the horrors that her father committed and her mother's inability to escape him, was torturous. I felt for her, I cried for her, I wished that someone would explain things to her, but at the same time I was glad that they didn't. Because she might not have survived if she had really understood her father. Racism was such a big issue back then, and Minrose Gwin approached this issue in a valid, believable, horrifying way. It's obvious that Gwin herself must have grown up in a place where racism is still a palpable thing. There is no way that she could have described it with such precision and grace otherwise. It felt like she was in the minds of her characters, and as such, I felt able to step into their shoes for a moment. And I wanted out. I don't really know what else to say, other than read this book. The summary calls the summer turbulent, and that really is the best word I can think of to describe this book. Turbulent. Turbulence that you will enjoy. It's not an easy read, and you can't expect it to be. But it is enjoyable, and it will affect you, and you will be glad that you did decide to read it.

A novel of struggle and transcendence

This extraordinary novel takes the reader inside the dark world of the deep South during the Civil Rights era, when unspeakable acts occurred alongside everyday moments of joy, humor, and pain. "I need you to understand how ordinary it all was," the book begins, as a young girl recalls after-dinner phone calls, a father who asks her to bring a box up from the cellar, and a mother who takes her on drunken night car rides as soon as he has gone. Young Florence will survive her childhood only if she manages not to see or understand her father's hooded costume, his violence against her and others, and the real suffering behind the wary dignity of the African-American family who cares for her when her own flies to pieces. This book carries the reader deep into a shared past--shared by Southerners White and Black, but also by those who only watched on television as Civil Rights workers were shot and tortured. Yet in that world, a mother who smells like sugar bakes beautiful cakes to support her family, a grandmother wears outlandish hats (and passes them on to an African-American domestic helper who is by no means pleased to have them), and a grandfather uses the tales of Uncle Wiggly to liberate a child's imagination. The reader cares deeply about young Florence, willing her survival and that of the beautiful young Black woman who opens new vistas for her as well as for the community she hopes to empower. Zenobia, the Queen of Palmyra, was a warrior whose capture by the Roman Emperor never dimmed her luster as a model of struggle and resistance; in this novel, her memory leads the characters and readers toward transcendence. Minrose Gwin takes the reader on a deeply affecting journey. This is a novel you will not soon forget.

"The ordinary can become beautiful as well as ugly."

"Stories make us whole or tear us into a million pieces." The summer of 1963 in Millwood, Mississippi, forms a narrative thread that winds through Florence Irene Forrest's life, a chiaroscuro of memories that linger, finally resurfacing in a moment of stunning clarity. Florence's life isn't much like other girls' her age, the family moving frequently, finally back to roost in a little house in Millwood where her mother bakes fabulous cakes for local ladies and her father sells burial insurance. From the beginning of this novel, the images are stark, memorable, the kitchen bustling with activity, the clanking of pots and pans, the steady stream of customers on Saturday mornings, the heavy shoe Winburn Forrest wears to even his gait, Win's mysterious forays into the sweltering Mississippi night, his special wooden box gripped under his arm, the hominess of Florence's grandmother's house, where maid Zenia is a larger-than-life presence. This long, drawn out summer is filled with portents as Florence worries over a return to fifth grade, a burgeoning Civil Rights movement, her mother's detour into depression and hospitalization, her father's blatant scrutiny and unwanted affection, his language uncensored as he murmurs racial epithets that fuel a growing rage at a changing future. It is with Zenie that Florence finds comfort and the cohesiveness of family. But much as Florence yearns for the security she feels with Zenie's tribe, especially since the arrival of a college student niece, Eva Greene, this white child has no place in the bosom of a black family, not when her father's name casts a pall on those who fear his reputation. As Florence treads the dangerous line between white and black, Gwin reveals the twisted face of hatred, the courage of the powerless, the helplessness of children and the painful legacy of a motherless girl. In this critical summer, Florence is inducted into an ugly world where racial animus is unveiled. Wherever she goes, her father's reputation follows, an onus she cannot escape. The troubled history of the south is Florence's inheritance, her future defined by the names Emmett Till, Medgar Evars and Byron De La Beckwith. But it is Florence's heart that triumphs in the end, her legacy grounded in a bloody past but the future hers alone to shape as the years pass and old ghosts are finally laid to rest in a harrowing denouement. Luan Gaines/2010.

Queen of Palmyra

Young Florence Forrest's family is falling apart. Her father has failed at yet another job, and her mother, Martha, insists they return to the family's hometown where Martha's cake business will support them. Florence's grandmother seems sympathetic to the young girl's plight--her raggedy, outgrown summer shirts and shorts and inability to place the states properly on a map. But despite her love for the child, the grandmother is limited by her relationship with her shiftless son-in-law. So 11-year-old Florence's care is mostly given over to the grandparents' long-time maid. Over six feet tall with bad veins and legs that pain her, Zenie, named for Zenobia, Queen of Palmyra, agrees to take on Florence for the summer. She'll "try it out. See how much trouble she get into." Mostly she ignores the girl. Then Eva, college-educated and filled with ideas, moves in with her Aunt Zenie and turns the Black community-- and young Florence's life-- upside down. With her daughter sitting obediently on the front car seat, Martha crosses the color line, making late-night trips to the local Black bootlegger for reasons that become clear as the story progresses. Her father's smooth wooden box, hidden in the basement and retrieved for his special evening meetings, frightens Florence, who now moves freely from Zenie's house to her own. From this new vantage-- the "colored" side of town--Florence is exposed to what race really means in small town Mississippi in 1963. Thus the stage is set for a summer, and a story, no one will forget. Told with the hindsight a belated child witness lends to the turbulent events, this eloquent novel could only be written by a Southerner. A native Mississippian, Minrose Gwin has a perfect ear for her characters' voices and an ability to create complicated situations that resonate without resorting to stereotypes. The writing is luminous, the story startling in its clarity and ability to transport readers to a time and place where nuances were the norm. Augusta Scattergood