Sugar Land

By Tammy Lynne Stoner

Book Overview

Sugar Land is the southern story of Nana Dara, a prison cook at the Imperial State Prison Farm for men in 1923, who--with the help of the blues singer Lead Belly--discovers how to break out of her own physical and emotional prison to become the feisty, lesbian matriarch to a family of Texas misfits.

Sugar Land is a southern fried novel about love, Lead Belly, and liberation. According to a starred Kirkus Review, Sugar Land "is a postcard of small-town Texas life from Prohibition through civil rights, tracing the treatment and awareness of gay people through these decades. The love child of Fannie Flagg and Rita Mae Brown... a] ravishing debut."

It's 1923 in Midland, Texas, and Miss Dara falls in love with her best friend―who also happens to be a girl. Terrified, Miss Dara takes a job at the Imperial State Prison Farm for men. Once there, she befriends inmate and soon-to-be legendary blues singer Lead Belly, who sings his way out (true story)―but only after he makes her promise to free herself from her own prison. Sugar Land is a triumphant, beautiful novel about the heart's refusal to be denied what the heart wants.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 159709627X
• ISBN13: 9781597096270
• Release Date: October 2018
• Publisher: Red Hen Press
• Length: 344 Pages
• Weight: 0.92 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.9" x 5.5" x 8.4"