Epic in scope yet intimate in detail, it is a vivid portrait of three generations of a Southern black family, as well as an ode to the city they call home. Memphis is a celebration of the enduring strength of female bonds, of what we pass down, from mother to daughter. It is in sketching portraits of the women in her life, her aunt and her mother, the women who come to have their hair done, the women who come to chat and gossip, that Joan begins laughing again, begins living. And now this house is the only place Joan has left. Fleeing her husbands explosive temper, Miriam has brought her two daughters, Joan and Mya, back to Memphis, to the home her. NATIONAL BESTSELLER - READ WITH JENNA BOOK CLUB PICK AS FEATURED ON TODAY - A spellbinding debut. August lives there still, running a salon where the neighbourhood women gather. Buy a cheap copy of Memphis book by Tara M Stringfellow. Fifty years ago, Hazel's husband was lynched by his all-white police squad, yet she made a life for herself and her daughters in the majestic house he built for them. They are no strangers to adversity resilience runs in their blood. This house full of history is home to the women of the North family. But when the front door opens, she does remember Derek. How the smell of honeysuckle is almost overwhelming as she climbs the porch steps to the house where her mother grew up. She doesn't know she's as likely to hear a gunshot ring out as the sound of children playing. She doesn't remember the bustle of Beale Street on a summer's night.

Stringfellow has written for Collective Unrest, Minerva Rising, Jet Fuel Review, Women Arts Quarterly Journal, and Apogee Journal, among other publications.

Joan was only a child the last time she visited Memphis. ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Poet, former attorney, Northwestern University MFA graduate, and semifinalist for the Fulbright Fellowship, Tara M.

Memphis novel tara stringfellow